By Charlotte Cain
A Leicester charity is desperately appealing for funds to continue employing a support worker who helps parents of premature babies in city hospitals.
ADAPT Prembabies Limited is a small charity based in Leicester hospital’s neonatal units, that provides mental and emotional support for parents of premature and poorly babies.
Sue Williams, the charity’s Development Coordinator, said: “It’s very difficult at the minute because a lot of the funding grants out there are very specific what they award donations to, and we don’t seem to fit in to their criteria.”
The charity employs a Family Support Worker on the neonatal units to provide emotional and well-being support to parents of babies needing special care.
Sue said: “We step in to help the parents through the emotional rollercoaster of having a premature baby because sometimes they don’t know from day to day, hour to hour, whether their baby will survive or not.”
With constant changing shifts of medical staff, she said it is essential that parents have someone to rely on consistently for their wellbeing and mental health.
Sue added: “If the baby needs a procedure and they have been told what it is but don’t understand, our Family Support Worker is there to explain it in layman’s terms.”
ADAPT was originally started by founders Rob and Fiona Morris when their little boy Harry spent the first nine months of his life on the neonatal unit. They started organising coffee mornings and get togethers with other parents which is how the charity began.
It has now been running for almost 30 years and the management team is mostly made up of parents who have experienced having a special care baby themselves.
The charity aims to start planning fundraising events every month featured around its 30 year anniversary in October to raise the £50,000 it costs them a year to continue their work.
Donations can be made through the website www.prembabies.co.uk
For more information on the work of ADAPT Prembabies or any offers of help please email info@prembabies.co.uk.
