THE aim of our campaign is simple — to persuade the Government to meet some of the core funding for children’s hospices from NHS funds, as it does for adult hospices.

There are currently 25 children’s hospices in the UK, with more on the way.

But while adult hospices receive between a third and a half of their annual running costs from the NHS, children’s hospices receive an average of just four per cent.

And many receive nothing.

There are two children’s hospices which care for children from News Shopper’s area — Demelza House, in Sittingbourne, and Richard House, in Newham, east London, which opened in October last year. Both have beds for eight children. Now there are plans for a third one.

CHILD, a charity launched in 2001, aims to raise £4m in five years to build another eight-bed children’s hospice in south London.

Like Demelza and Richard House, it plans to offer other services to families with children who have life-threatening and life-limiting illnesses.

These can include bereavement care, home care and day care as well as facilities for the whole family.

But these services come at a price. Neither Demelza nor Richard House receives any NHS funding and have to raise £1.5m each year to survive. A new hospice in south London will add to that fundraising burden.

And this picture is repeated across the country.

That is why, if these hospices are to survive, it is vital some of their annual costs are met from NHS funding.

Two-and-a-half years ago Demelza faced a funding crisis which forced it to close half its beds and make specialist staff redundant. And sick children had to wait for vital services.

Every MP has been contacted by News Shopper asking for their backing. And this week many have renewed their pledges of support, writing again to junior health minister Hazel Blears to ask for action.

Eric Forth, MP for Bromley and Chislehurst, is one of those who has taken up the cause again.

He is pressing Miss Blears to show how the Government is supporting children’s hospices.

“I have also asked her to divulge what plans her department has for funding children’s hospices centrally through the NHS,” he told News Shopper.

You can also join News Shopper’s campaign by urging your MP to write to Miss Blears or her boss, health secretary Alan Milburn, or write to them yourself at the Department of Health, Richmond House, 79 Whitehall, London SW1A 2NL.