Viv Levene

The holidays are always a difficult time for critically ill children and never more so than during a pandemic when isolating in hospital or at home becomes a necessity. We have been there throughout the summer with a host of interactive virtual activity days to amuse and delight.  More than 200 children have attended activities including a meet and greet with Spiderman and Princess Elsa, Olympic art and anime workshops, a Mamma Mia musical theatre session, TikTok dancing with the Gregorian Sisters and, this week, a Back to School virtual challenge.

One mum messaged us to say, “Just a quick message to say thank you sooo much for yesterday. Zac loved meeting Spiderman. He is still talking about it now.”

We’ve had so much fun doing it and it’s been wonderful to spread so many smiles during the holidays. We are now working on plans for half term including Halloween and Christmas.

Our partner, Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice, hosted their family day, Noah’s Fest, earlier this month. We were delighted to attend to entertain the children under their care as well as their families.

Our fairies, magicians and artists supported the many family activities available on the day with singing, magic tricks and art activities. A member of the hospice team commented as a Spread a Smile fairy sang ‘Never Enough’ with two little girls, “The immediate audience had tears in their eyes. She really made the day special for several children and helped create a lovely atmosphere.”

It’s wonderful to receive such positive feedback and to see the children’s smiles. We are delighted to work with our partner hospitals and hospices to enhance their events and spread more smiles.

Spread a Smile is delighted to announce that we will be funding a Play Specialist role at Great Ormond Street Hospital.  Spread a Smile regularly works with GOSH, offering our range of services to entertain and enhance the wellbeing of the children and young people under their care.  This new role underlines the excellent working relationship between the two organisations and the importance of play and entertainment throughout a child’s healthcare journey.

Debbie Tropp (pictured here and above, pre pandemic), from Spread a Smile, who is a qualified Play Specialist, has taken on the role and started last month. Debbie will provide specialised therapeutic play and support, predominantly for 0-5 year olds with complex conditions, many of whom have spent large parts of their early life in hospital. She will support young children to achieve important milestones and provide creative and stimulating play opportunities that are crucial to effective coping and healthy development. The patients Debbie is supporting will be referred from multidisciplinary professionals across different areas of the hospital. She will also spend time in GOSH’s Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), providing stimulation and sensory input with long term patients who have complex needs.

Lucy Jackson, Chief Executive of Spread a Smile, said, “We’re thrilled to be working with the incredible team at Great Ormond Street Hospital and are delighted to be funding a Play Specialist role at the hospital. This position will enhance the support available to young patients who need this dedicated, long term support.  Debbie has already spent time volunteering at GOSH and demonstrated how she is able, through play, to assist children and young people impacted by long term hospitalisation. This role will enable us to spread more smiles, joy and laughter to seriously ill children at GOSH.”

Laura Walsh, Head of Play Services at GOSH, said, “Spread a Smile are such amazing partners and are always so sensitive to the needs of patients here at GOSH. With the additional support from Debbie, the new Spread a Smile funded Play Specialist, we’ve been able to deliver play and therapeutic interventions for even more younger children in the Intensive Care Units. We are thrilled to be the first hospital to benefit from a Spread a Smile funded member of our team and it’s wonderful to see the difference these positive interactions are already making to our patients.”

We are delighted to have been nominated as Blink’s Charity Partner. Blink is the world’s first enterprise app designed exclusively for frontline workers and we can’t wait to start working with their enthusiastic team. Barry McDonagh, Blink’s COO commented,  “At Blink we are delighted to join the Spread a Smile family. We are very much looking forward to building on this partnership in the coming months and years to bring some cheer to the lives of children who are seriously ill in hospital. We cannot think of a more worthy charity to be associated with.”

Earlier this month Laura Walter, our Director of Services, was a key speaker at the NAHPS (National Association of Health Play Specialists) and the CCLG (Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group) Multiprofessionals Group AGM.  Her presentation focused on our work with play specialists and other healthcare professionals and the development of our services to support and enhance their practice for the benefit of the patients and families they work with.  Our digital services, and in particular our virtual bedside visits, were of particular interest, having transformed the way we work, our reach and impact.

Laura said, “It was a pleasure to speak at the NAHPS AGM and the CCLG Multiprofessionals meeting to raise awareness about Spread a Smile. Our aim is to grow nationally to support paediatric and teenage patients across England and the UK. This was a fantastic opportunity to communicate with healthcare professionals about the ways in which Spread a Smile can help them and how we can work collaboratively together to best support seriously ill children and young people in hospital.”

This year the Virgin Money London Marathon is taking place both in person and virtually on Sunday 3 October.

We’re delighted to have so many dedicated supporters taking part and we’d like to welcome them all to #TeamSmile.

Taking part in the London race is Jason Finch (from our partner Masthaven Bank) who is no stranger to challenges for Spread a Smile. Last year, together with a colleague, they completed a challenge to run 2020 miles for 2020.

Simon Chandler (from our partner Opticore), Martin Murray (from our partner Hartley’s) and Claire Kemp are all taking part in the Virtual Marathon, running the impressive 26.2 miles around a course of their own choosing.

And Henry (aged 11) and his friends Finn, Daniel and Josh are running a marathon relay on the same day.

Due to injury, we have one place left for the Virtual Marathon. If you’d like to join #TeamSmile and help spread smiles to seriously ill and hospitalised children and teenagers please email fundraising@spreadasmile.org – we’d love to welcome you to the team.

Email fundraising@spreadasmile.org to join the team.

Family and friends of Ben Jarvis, who we entertained recently when he was undergoing treatment for a very rare cancer, took part in the New Forest Rattler. Events included a 5km run, a half marathon and a 130km bike ride.

The family has raised close to £60,000 which will be split between three charities including Spread a Smile. They chose to support Spread a Smile because “Mr Magic would make Ben howl with laughter during his darkest chemo days. Really belly-deep laughs that are pure joy to hear and lift your heart. They even put on a Santa’s Grotto for him before his last radiotherapy treatment on Christmas Eve. No child should have to go through the sort of treatment plans that cancers like Ben’s require. But, if they do, it should be with the support of people like the Spread a Smile team – because it’s the smiles and laughter that get them through it.”

Huge thanks to Hannah and Tom Jarvis for this fantastic fundraising feat.