News

The whole Spread a Smile team was saddened to learn of the passing of Paul Sexton, Managing Director of Lawsons Timber Merchants, last weekend. Paul was a great friend and mentor of the charity and will be hugely missed.

Josephine Segal, Spread a Smile’s co-founder, pays tribute to Paul:

“Soon after the charity was founded, Paul was introduced to Spread a Smile by Collette Spinner, one of our fabulous entertainers. He attended our first fundraising dinner at which he invited Vanessa, Collette and me to a meeting at the offices of Lawsons. At that meeting he simply asked what he could do to help. His kindness, willingness and sheer desire to help Spread a Smile in any way he could was something that will always be treasured and never forgotten.

“Lawsons has been so generous towards Spread a Smile and sponsored every Spread a Smile Winter Party. Paul also hosted the Lawsons Fundraising Dinner for Spread a Smile which raised over £100,000.

“Paul was an incredible mentor to Spread a Smile; he believed in us and what we were trying to build and encouraged us think bigger and do more. He always had time for us. His personal advice was always spot-on. Paul spoke from the heart at our 2017 fundraising dinner where he captivated the audience with his direct style, personal challenges, passion and wit. He encouraged people to consider how fortunate they were and do whatever they could, large or small, to help others.

“Over the years, Vanessa and I realised that Paul was helping so many other causes alongside Spread a Smile. Paul was so understated, and his ability to include everyone and make sure all around him were a team and together they would all succeed in building dreams and fulfilling goals was a very special talent.

“He was a loyal supporter, a mentor and, above all else, a true friend. The world is a poorer place without Paul. May his dear soul rest in peace and may his wonderful family find comfort in knowing what a respected, admired and loved man he truly was.”

Everyone at Spread a Smile is sending their deepest condolences to Paul’s family.

Under normal circumstances, Spread a Smile would be delivering 35 monthly visits to 8 London hospitals, bringing fairies, magicians, face-painters, therapy dogs, singers and lots more to bring smiles to and enhance the wellbeing of seriously and terminally ill children and teenagers. As a result of COVID-19 we have had to suspend all visits and face-to-face contact with patients.

But we know that those smiles are now more important than ever. Young patients in hospital have become more isolated than ever before. This is why we need your help. Because with your help, suspending our hospital visits does not have to mean suspending smiles.

In response to the outbreak, we have created Smile TV – providing children and teenagers access to special video content made exclusively for them, via our website. We can make them smile at any time of the day. Whilst they are able to, our hospital entertainment team are together recording videos: magic, singing, face-painting and lots more. And once they can no longer film together, our plan is that they will keep recording new content from their homes and keep uploading it to Smile TV. But we can only continue to do this with your help.

We have also started sending art and boredom-busting packs and special treats to our hospital partners to distribute to young patients to keep them busy. But, again, we can only keep sending these packs in with your help.

As well as our hospital visits, COVID-19 has also affected our practical ability to fundraise. Like many others, we have had to cancel all of the events that we had planned for the coming months where we would have raised vital funds to support our work.

Below is a list detailing how your donation will make such a profound difference to our work:

• £5 would help us buy art and crafts materials for art packs
• £25 would enable us to provide a child with a complete art pack
• £50 would help us create a personalised message from an entertainer to a child in particular need of a smile
• £100 would help us organise a treat drop to one of our hospital partners
• £250 would help us create a unique video from an entertainer on Smile TV
• £1000 would help us future-proof the running costs of Smile TV

So how can you help?

1. Please DONATE HERE to help us meet these new and unexpected needs at this unprecedented time
2. Please share this page with anybody who you think might also be able to help us

As we all know, the situation is changing by the day. We will therefore keep this page updated as our response continues to evolve to meet the evolving needs.

On behalf of all of the children, teenagers, families and hospital staff that we work with – and from all of us at Spread a Smile – thank you so much for your generous support at this uncertain and unsettling time. We are all so grateful for every single smile that you can help us to spread.

To donate to the COVID-19 Appeal, please click here.

Get In Touch!

To donate to Spread a Smile’s COVID-19 Appeal please click here. 

3 April 2020

To continue spreading smiles. Spread a Smile has now introduced Smile Spaces to our offering. We’re always very proud to deliver a personal touch to all our visits, and that’s now continuing digitally! At a prearranged time, we can bring together a child and their parent in hospital, their family at home and one of our fantastic entertainers in their own home for a bespoke ‘virtual visit’.

To arrange a virtual visit or your own personal message for your child, please email admin@spreadasmile.org 

18 March 2020

Whilst our visits have been suspended, the Spread a Smile team has been working hard to ensure we can continue spreading smiles.

We’re very excited to be launching Smile TV today, bringing entertainment to children and teenagers in hospital. Our wonderful team of entertainers has created some great content for Smile TV, and will continue to add films and clips so please do keep checking back.

To watch Smile TV, please click here.

12 March 2020

Together with our hospital partners, earlier this week we took the decision to temporarily pause our hospital visits, theatre trips and parties. The health and wellbeing of our children, teenagers and their families in hospital is our top priority and we don’t want to place anyone at undue risk during this time.

Suspending visits doesn’t mean suspending spreading smiles, and we’re now looking at ways to continue providing Spread a Smile entertainment to children and teenagers in hospital through virtual means.

Please keep checking this website for updates on our new service, which will be an exciting new way for us to spread smiles.

We continued with our deliveries of art and boredom-busting packs earlier this week, delivering 200 packs to patients at Great Ormond Street Hospital and 50 packs to out-patients in radiotherapy at University College Hospital. Filled with items including activity books, pens, stickers, puzzles and more, as well as some sweet treats, each specially created pack will help to spread a much needed smile to a child who is currently in hospital.

Whilst we’re all feeling the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown, children in hospital are feeling increasingly isolated – they can currently only have one parent or carer with them in hospital, can’t see their siblings, and for infection control purposes, hospitals are having to restrict the number of toys available – they can all only be used by a single patient.

We would like to say a huge thanks to our partners who helped us to create these packs, including Arcturus  Books, Alligator Products, Cheatwell Games, Peachy Stickers, Polybags, Royal Talens Foundation, Shanly Foundation and Spin Master.

If you’d like to partner with us on future drops, please do get in touch on admin@spreadasmile.org  

We are very excited to be launching Smiles TV today!

SmileTV is an online platform from children’s charity, Spread a Smile.  Featuring all your favourite entertainers from our hospital visits as well as games and art activities, SmileTV allows us to sing and play along together at those times when we are unable to visit you in person.  You’ll even be able to see some very special magic tricks that we can’t do in a hospital!   Do let us know how Smile TV has made you smile using @spreadasmileuk and #smiletv.

To view Smile TV, please click here. 

If you have any ideas or would like book a personalised message from our entertainers please email info@spreadasmile.org

Spread a Smile certainly spread the love during the week leading up to Valentine’s Day 2020.

Our wonderful team of entertainers gave out Spread a Smile heart balloons to children and teenagers we met on our visits to Great Ormond Street Hospital, St Mary’s Hospital, The Royal London Hospital and Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. Smiles were seen across the hospitals with over 600 balloons being distributed to the families we met.

We also spread cake-filled love on our visit to UCLH, with Valentine’s cupcakes from our lovely supporter, Lola’s Cupcakes. These were hugely appreciated by all.

We’re delighted that January 2020 sees us add another new hospital to our roster of regular visits – King’s College Hospital in Denmark Hill, south London. Spread a Smile will be visiting King’s once a month with a team of entertainers to visit children and teenagers being treated there.

We also joined the King’s play team, entertaining patients at their Christmas party in December.

Laura Walter, Spread a Smile’s Head of Operations said, “We are excited to be regularly visiting King’s Hospital. Our entertainers have felt so welcomed by the amazing staff, patients and families already. We are so happy to be working in such a lovely environment.”

Jackie Ambrose, lead play specialist at King’s said, “These visits bring joy and fun to our patients, staff and families. It is a great distraction from waiting for clinics and brings normality to the day. Big thank you to Spread a Smile. We cannot wait until our next session.”

Be one of the first to get your hands on a bag of Metcalfe’s® Charity Popcorn Sea Salt featuring the Spread a Smile logo.

We are incredibly excited to be able to announce a 3-year partnership with Metcalfe’s® which will see funds donated to us from sales of Metcalfe’s® Charity Popcorn Sea Salt and Variety Mini Packs. The first packs featuring our logo came off the production line very recently so you can expect to see them in a store near you very soon.

The partnership will also see us delivering Metcalfe’s® Charity Popcorn during special hospital visits, cinema nights in hospital and at our family events and parties.

We will launch the partnership to the wider public in the next few months but we were so excited that we wanted to let you, our wonderful supporters, know as soon as possible!

Get In Touch!

A fabulous time was had by all at the Spread a Smile Winter Party on Sunday 24 November 2019. The party was attended by over 300 critically and terminally ill children and their families who the charity has met whilst visiting them in hospital. The party was held at the London Marriott Hotel Regents Park and was generously sponsored by our wonderful friends at Lawsons.

The annual party is a very special event, crammed full of everything to make the perfect party. From face painting to virtual reality, celebrity visitors to character appearances, sushi, pizza, cupcakes, popcorn, magic, fairies, music, a disco and arts and crafts – the best time was had by all the guests. One girl said that she loved “seeing everyone smiling.”

Our fabulous suppliers came and helped create the perfect party atmosphere. We’re sending a huge thanks to Baz & Fred Pizzas, Build a Bear, Lola’s Cupcakes, Metalfe’s Popcorn®, Pan N Ice, Spinmaster, SushiDog, TikTok, Surrey Car Meet, JH Video Entertainment, Pop Up Arcade, Walking Pet Balloon and YR Live Customise Printing. DJ Kwame Knight provided the wonderful party atmosphere and the Spread a Smile Choir performed. There were also special guest appearances from Eyal, Samira and Zara from Love Island and X Factor: Celebrity, Delilah Belle Hamlin and Arsenal star Calum Chambers and character appearances from Minions and PJ Masks.

Lucy Jackson, Chief Executive of Spread a Smile, said, “Our Spread a Smile Winter Party was the best yet! It was wonderful seeing so many children and teenagers having so much fun and hearing so much laughter. We know lots of families will leave here with special memories to cherish. All our generous suppliers helped to create the perfect party atmosphere and it was particularly exciting to welcome our celebrity visitors too. Thank you so much to everyone involved!”