News

Last Tuesday, 11 teams comprised of our wonderful supporters and partners came together for a friendly 5-a-side football tournament.

Our tournament took over the Castlehaven Community pitches in Camden as teams battled it out for the Plate and the Cup. The Teams came from Enra Finance, ICBC Standard Bank, LMAC Group, Opticore IT, CMS Distribution, Canary Wharf Contractors, Hamilton Barnes, and Uncommon.

Congratulations to the winners of the plate, Canary Wharf Contractors, and of the Cup, LMAC Group! Even more importantly, we raised over £8,000 to spread smiles to children in hospital.

Also, a huge thank you to both LMAC Group and Canary Wharf Contractors for generously sponsoring the event.

While Easter isn’t all about chocolate, it’s definitely the best part!

Thanks to the incredible generosity of our donors, we delivered over 2,700 easter eggs to hospitalised children across our NHS partners in the lead up to Easter weekend.

Our Spread a Smile team also hosted virtual meet and greets with the Easter Bunny, and children were able to get creative with Easter wreath making classes.

It was an extra busy week, which required a tremendous amount of effort and care from all involved, for which we are hugely grateful. Being able to bring joy and levity to children on a holiday which can be an especially hard time for young people in hospital, made all of the challenges worth it.

We were able to exceed our target of delivered eggs thanks to our wonderful supporters, including All Aboard, Enra Finance, Bregal Milestone, Binfield Road Surgery, E Imagination Store, Little Learners UK, and Chancellor’s School.

An extra special thank you goes to Mars UK, who donated over 1,500 Easter Eggs, and His Church Charity who supported us with the logistics of the massive delivery!

Our very own Head of Family Events and superstar, Natalie Donaldson, will be running in the upcoming Vitality 10k run on the 2nd May. Having joined Spread a Smile as an entertainer nine years ago, Natalie has been a long standing member of the Spread a Smile family. Through her experience, she has seen first-hand the incredible impact our work has had on families and seriously ill children.

She has been training in her team of four who are all going to be running to raise money for Spread a Smile. Despite discovering that she might be more of a 5k person, she is determined to run and complete the challenge for all the children we support.

Natalie says: “Providing a moment of normality and joy for children who are suffering with serious illnesses is the most valuable part of my job. By taking on the 10k challenge, I hope to raise money to help us do many more virtual and in-person hospital visits which make such a difference to patients (and hopefully reach the finish line!)”

If you would like to join Natalie’s team and run in the Vitality 10k, check out our challenge events page here: https://spreadasmile.org/challenge-events/

All members of our Team Smile will receive running vests, t-shirts as well as any help and advice you need. We’ll also be there on the day in full voice to cheer you on!

Booking is now live for the 2022 Spread a Smile golf days on Thursday 8th and Friday 9th September, returning after much demand to the stunning Melbourne Course at Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire.

To book a team, please email rosie@spreadasmile.org. We are limited to 24 teams per day, so do get in touch to avoid missing out. 

Sponsorship is so important to the success of all of our events, and we hope you might consider taking on one of our sponsorship packages, starting from £250 for tee sponsorship (please email for more information). Please know that by increasing your support, you will be helping us to spread many more smiles to seriously ill and hospitalised children.

We very much hope to see you in September, to experience our unique Spread a Smile hospitality and magic!

We are incredibly excited to announce that comedian, writer, and all-round fabulous person, Suzi Ruffell, has become a Spread a Smile ambassador.

Suzi came across our charity when a friend’s child was in hospital and saw what a difference our entertainers made. Since then, she has supported us by generously donating her winnings from TV appearances on The Tipping Point and The Weakest Link, and she headlined and curated an incredible comedy fundraiser in December 2021, at The Comedy Store, bringing along a host of her incredibly funny friends.

Suzi said: “I’m honoured to become an ambassador of Spread a Smile, the work they do is incredible, bringing joy and laughter to children and their families in the hardest of times. I’m very proud to be part of the Spread a Smile family and I look forward to helping raise more money for their wonderful work.”

We hope to bring bucket loads of laughter and cheer through our new partnership with Suzi who will be hosting another comedy night later this year in aid of the thousands of critically ill children and families that we support at Spread a Smile.

Lucy Jackson, CEO of Spread a Smile said: “We are honoured and thrilled to have Suzi as a Spread a Smile ambassador. Her energy, kindness, and laughter reflect our charity spirit and our mission to bring a little bit of happiness and distraction to hospitalised children and their families every day. It’s an absolute pleasure to have Suzi in the Spread a Smile family.”

To stay up to date with the fundraising events we have coming up, you can keep an eye out on our news pages or sign up to our newsletter here.

We are thrilled to have partnered with the Demelza Hospice in London. The hospice provides specialist one-to-one care and support for critically ill babies, children, and young people up to the age of 18.

Our team will be visiting the children at Demelza Hospice in person every month and families will also have access to our range of virtual events as part of our new partnership. We hope our services will make a huge difference in supporting Demelza Hospice’s care of seriously ill children.

Spread a Smile’s resident entertainers, Jasmin and Daniel, visited the children for the first time this month, sprinkling a little bit of joy with dancing, singing, parachute games and magic shows.

Bethany Harris, Senior Healthcare Assistant at Demelza Hospice, said: “Since Spread a Smile started visiting, it feels as though we all have our sparkle back. Lockdown in a hospice has had its challenges, making memories with children and families at the forefront of what we do. It has been really lovely to have such incredible visits from Jasmin and Daniel after not having visitors for so long. They just know how to make the children feel special.”

We cannot wait to visit the children at Demelza Hospice again to spread more smiles.

In March, we partnered with Character World to gift 2,000 blankets to children in hospital. Character World, who work with some of the world’s leading gaming, music, and film companies to create licensed products, donated the blankets which we then delivered to children across the UK.

Featuring popular children’s characters including Baby Shark, Lego, Stranger Things, LOL OMG and Minecraft, the blankets have already started to bring smiles to faces of the children across the 23 Spread a Smile hospital partners, including Great Ormond Street Hospital, University College Hospital, Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, Leicester Children’s Hospital, Christie Hospital in Manchester, and many more.

We have distributed the blankets alongside our usual programme of in-hospital and virtual entertainment, which includes fairies, magicians, singers, face-painters, therapy dogs that make bedside visits, as well as organised art initiatives and family events.

This effort was part of our aim to spread 40,000 smiles this year.

Lucy Jackson, Chief Executive, Spread a Smile said: “These blankets make such a difference to our young patients, bringing smiles, warmth and comfort, making the hospital environment more child-friendly and less clinical. We can’t thank the team at Character World enough for making this possible. Our partners are so important to the work that we do in spreading some much needed joy at some of the darkest moments.”

Danny Schweiger, Character World Joint Managing Director added: “Character World is proud to support such an important and inspirational organisation. The work that Spread a Smile does is fantastic, and we are proud to have been able to donate some of our fantastic products.”

This Valentine’s Day, the Spread a Smile team were out and about delivering over 1,000 heart-shaped surprises to critically ill children in NHS hospitals. We delivered balloons to 14 hospitals in London and Manchester to spread the love.

With hospitals still restricting the number of visitors allowed due to COVID-19, it’s as important as ever for us to show children and young people that their loved ones are thinking of them on this day (as are we at Spread a Smile). Being able to connect children with their loved ones is even more important on special days, and we were delighted to be able to bring some joy and warmth to the wards.

Lucy Jackson, CEO of Spread a Smile said, “We are all about bringing joy and laughter to seriously ill children in hospital. Valentine’s Day gives us an opportunity to show patients that we care! We are delivering 1230 balloons to children and teenagers at 14 of our hospital partners to bring them a much-needed smile. It’s incredible to see the joy that a simple balloon can bring and it’s very special to see all the children in hospital happily clutching their heart-shaped balloon. It’s a really amazing distraction.”

The hospitals we visited were: Royal London, St Mary’s, Kings, Whittington, North Middlesex, Northwick Park, Royal Brompton, St George’s, Chelsea and Westminster, Evelina, Royal Marsden, Royal National Orthopaedic, Noah’s Ark Hospice, and the Proton Beam Therapy Centre at the Christie.

This month, we warmly welcomed all children under the care of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and their families to the Spread a Smile family. This latest partnership is the tenth major NHS London hospital that we are working with.  It marks the next milestone in our mission to bring comfort, laughter and support to seriously ill and hospitalised children and their families throughout the country.

Children at Chelsea and Westminster and West Middlesex Hospitals will be able to join our weekly virtual group hospital visits from entertainers, take part in our themed activity days, and receive our surprise treat drops (keep an eye out for Cupid on Valentine’s Day!). Families of long-term patients will also be able to book one-on-one virtual sessions with our wonderful entertainers and will receive our delivery of post-procedure treat boxes. We will be delivering these visits in collaboration with the Trust’s official charity CW+, as part of their participatory Arts in Health programme to improve the hospital experience for patients and their families.

Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust patients will also not to have to wait too long to see one of our fairies in person as we will be starting our in-person entertainer visits in March.

To find out more about how we support our families, you can sign up to our monthly newsletter here.

More than 200 of Rosie Fortescue’s rainbow bracelets have been sold since the launch of our partnership with the luxury jewellery brand last summer, raising over £4,000 for Spread a Smile.

Rosie Fortescue: “I chose to donate 100% of the profits of this bracelet to Spread a Smile because they are the most fantastic charity that truly make the lives of children and their families better at the most difficult times.“

This generous donation will make such a difference to the work we do to bring smiles to children who are critically ill in hospital.

Thank you to Rosie, her team and everyone who bought our lovely rainbow bracelets!