Morson's 2021 charities Acorns Children’s Hospice and Kidscan share £40,000 donation

​Following an extra year of fundraising, Morson was delighted to present our 2020/21 chosen charities, Acorns Children’s Hospice and Kidscan, with an additional donation following our fundraising efforts throughout 2021.

In December 2020, CEO Ged Mason presented £40,000 to each organisation at the end of year awards. Following a year where fundraising had proven near impossible owing to the coronavirus pandemic and the associated lockdowns, money budgeted for events and travel was donated directly from the business, with the promise of continuing the fundraising efforts for an additional year.

Both charities were presented with £20,000 each at a presentation at Morson Group’s head office, taking the total raised per charity to £60,000.

Acorns Children’s Hospice

Acorn’s Children’s Hospice is a Midlands-based charity that provides support and end of life care for children with life-limiting and life-threatening illnesses. The three hospice locations contain hydrotherapy pools, arts, sensory rooms and all of the other things needed to make children’s days the fullest they can be, providing respite care and allowing families to stay over safe in the knowledge that their child is being looked after.

Noel Cramer, Director of Supporter Engagement at Acorns Children’s Hospice, described the fundraising campaign and Morson’s involvement:

We launched the appeal to save the Black Country (Walsall) hospice in July 2019, which was the hardest decision to have to take. Essentially it was bought about by the fact that one of our three hospices was at risk of closure due to ongoing financial challenges around future NHS funding to ensure seamless operation.

When we launched the campaign, the public was phenomenally supportive and generous. The local community rallied around us; everything from Walsall Football Club to the supermarket, everyone in the area really made it very clear that whatever else was going on, it wasn’t fair that the children’s hospice was at risk of closure.

By April 2021 we’d raised enough money to remove the risk of closure. This was a brilliant achievement considering Covid had happened during that time. The support kept coming. At a critical point in the fundraising, December 2020, Morson approached us and we met the charity committee and Ged. We were bowled over by the generous support, and it was at that stage that we really started to believe we were going to do it, and it was only five months later that we did.

In the almost 12 months since its future was secured, the Walsall hospice has gone on to not only continue to offer a vital service, but also look to its future:

“We’ve met families and children with incredible stories and make it more obvious that this asset for the community is needed. We met one family who came with us for end-of-life care, had chance to spend a week with teenage daughter who later sadly passed away. But the family was very grateful for the time they spent. The team were all masked up and in full PPE, couldn’t see people’s faces. But because the family were together, they felt supported. When they went down to the dining room, the same staff who were looking after their daughter and it was the first time they could see them without masks. They could see the smiles on their faces. They called them ‘the angels with the masks’.

The hospice was set up in 1999 and hasn’t had a major refurb since. Now we’ve been able to secure the future of the hospice, we know there’s now a need to improve some of the spaces. We’ve launched an appeal to improve the bedrooms, special bedrooms and family care suite as well as the arts and crafts room. This will transform the experience for the children.”

Kidscan

Kidscan Children’s Cancer Research is a Salford-based charity that funds and manages research into new and improved treatments for children with cancer. Cancer is the leading cause of death in children in the UK and 25% of children diagnosed won’t make it to their 30th birthday. Many of the children who do survive, suffer life-long, life-limiting side effects caused by the treatments used to cure them.

Beth Jones and Dr David Pye from Kidscan explained how things have been going for the past two years:

For a lot of charities, the last couple of years have been really challenging. For Kidscan, some of the research element has been able to continue but trying to find fundraising to support has been more challenging. We’ve had to cancel a few face-to-face events and it’s generally been a challenging time. Things are starting to improve a bit now though.

There’s been some good things that have come out of the pandemic though believe it or not. A lot of organisations have struggled to get funding, so they’ve been in survival mode. Historically, it’s been difficult to get the top universities to work with the smaller charities, but that’s changed now. From a research point of view, we’ve got access to a larger pool of people. Most people work in adult cancer due to how the funding works, yet children’s cancer has now become more of a target for research. It’s forcing new links with new researchers and better chances of coming up with treatments.

Charities are also working together in a way they haven’t ever done before to keep the research going. We’re working to fund joint projects with other charities. Just recently we were having discussions with North West Cancer Research UK to fund a PhD, which is up to £80,000 work of project over three years.

David also spoke about the future of the charity:

We’re working on the Kidscan placement scheme over the next few months. This is where graduates, after two years of study, take a year out to work with us. This makes them more employable and allows us to have people in the labs to do the basic research. We take on 12-14 placements every year from the University of Salford to create new diagnostic and treatment kits.

Morson will continue its dedication to charity throughout 2022, with our employee-voted organisations this year being Teenage Cancer Trust and Refuge. Find out more here