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Friends of Belarussian Children's Hospice (UK)
Amersham, UK
+44 (0) 1494 727409
daryl@friends-bch.org.uk; ann@friends-bch.org.uk
www.friends-bch.org.uk
Friends of Belarussian Children’s Hospice (UK) supports the Belarussian Children’s Hospice, the first hospice in Belarus. Friends also supports the nascent hospice movement in Belarus which has been initiated and led by staff and parents at the Belarussian Children’s Hospice in Minsk.
Friends of BCH is dedicated to the Belarussian Children’s Hospice and its spin-off palliative care projects in Belarus.
Friends of BCH supports the staff salary bill at the Belarussian Children's Hospice, currently running at a total of £62,000 p.a. Friends also finances other programmes at the Hospice. It monitors use of funds and provides proper and transparent accounting.
Our chairwoman, who has thirty years’ experience in business and charitable projects in the former Soviet Union, is a member of the Advisory Board of the Belarussian Children’s Hospice. The Board meets annually to discuss strategy, management and budgets. This means that Friends of Belarussian Children’s Hospice (UK) has an input into major decisions affecting the Hospice and its strategic development.
The Belarussian Children’s Hospice was the first children’s hospice in the former Soviet Union. Today it is the leader in palliative care in Belarus, caring for 60 - 70 chronically and terminally ill children, their parents and siblings. It also provides palliative care training courses in conjunction with the Belarussian Medical Academy.
Since it’s foundation in 1994, the Belarussian Children’s Hospice has cared for chronically and terminally ill children and their families, all over Belarus. Its doctors and nurses have frequently made daily journeys of seven hours or more in the hospice car to look after desperately ill children all over the country. The hospice provides counselling, care training and material support to the families of chronically and terminally ill children, and continues to support them after the death of the child. It has set up other children’s hospices around Belarus. The hospice does not charge patients or their families for its services or for medication.
Belarus is a small country squeezed between much larger neighbours – Russia, Ukraine and Poland. Following the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine, 24% of Belarus’ territory was irradiated. There is a Closed Zone in the south from which entire populations were evacuated in the wake of the disaster.
The idea of palliative care is still new in Belarus. There is little official recognition of palliative care, particularly at home. Terminally or chronically ill children are generally hidden in the general wards of underfunded hospitals or in institutions. The Belarussian Children’s Hospice enables families to care for their children at home and gives the children back their dignity and quality of life. The Hospice runs a popular day centre and a summer holiday project. Many families have now set up self-help groups and bereavement groups. Some Belarussian companies are now also supporting the hospice but it will be many years before public awareness in Belarus is such that the hospice will be able to survive without western aid. At the moment the hospice relies on western grants for 87% of its income, of which approximately 50% is provided by Friends of Belarussian Children’s Hospice (UK).
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