Together for Short Lives
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About Together We Can

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Together We Can is a collection of resources designed to equip and inspire organisations working in children’s palliative to use volunteers to provide practical support to families in their homes.

In the UK there are 49,000 children with a range of life-limiting conditions. On top of caring for their child and juggling endless medical appointments, families can struggle with everyday tasks, like housework, shopping or spending time with their other children. A little bit of help from a volunteer at home can make a huge difference.

Beginning in 2014, Family Support Volunteering was a pilot project which aimed to test the feasibility of using volunteers to provide practical support to families accessing children’s palliative care services. The project aimed to test different models of volunteering in a range of voluntary and statutory services and encourage us all to re-think the role of the volunteers in this sector. It involved 9 UK organisations with expertise in children’s palliative care, volunteering or both, as follows: Children’s Hospices Across Scotland (CHAS), East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices (EACH), Jessie May Children’s Hospice at Home, NHS South Warwickshire Foundation Trust, NHS Whittington Health Trust, Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice, Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity, Together for Short Lives and, Volunteering Matters. The pilot was initiated and co-funded by The Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, and the True Colours Trust.

The resources and the programmes from which they were developed were funded by:

Organisations that contributed to developing and testing the resources included:

Keep in touch

We hope that Together We Can is a valuable resource for your organisation. We’d love to keep in touch with you if you are considering setting up a Family Support Volunteering Service – we can send you updates as our volunteering resource grows and we’d like to hear your views on your experience of implementing a Family Support Volunteering Service.

We want to continue to develop and refine the resource as it is used, and bring together a Community of Practice to share learning and experience. We will also include users’ views in our evaluation of this resource.

Please complete the details below to keep in touch. You can tell us your organisation name, or just the type of organisation you work for if you’d prefer to remain anonymous. If you don’t work for an organisation please just write individual in that field.

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