Hollywood Bowl Group - High Wycombe

Rosie’s Rainbow Fund recognises the physical, emotional, and spiritual impact that a child or young person’s serious or life-limiting illness or disability has on the individual child as well as on the family unit. We offer a multi-pronged approach to supporting children and families throughout every phase of coping with serious illness and disability in hospital, schools, & the community. In hospital, our charity provides music, art, and play therapy to life-limited and disabled children as a means of aiding in medical treatment, offering pain relief, encouraging emotional and physical expression, and allowing children the chance to “just be children” and have fun. Where appropriate, siblings are also included in sessions, allowing for a sense of normalcy and sibling interaction often lost when a child is separated from the family unit in hospital. At the same time, we recognize the unique difficulties faced by parents in hospital—they spend long, worrying hours by their child’s bedsides, having to be strong for their child, often separated from spouses or other children during the hospital stay. For some parents, the ability to work may become an issue. Through therapeutic aromatherapy massage and pastoral care sessions with our licenced nurse, midwife, and massage therapist Amanda Tibbels, we offer parents a chance for a break, to have a moment of respite, to talk about their feelings, and to restore themselves to be able to be more effective carers and parents. Beginning in 2016, Rosie's Rainbow Fund hopes to offer therapeutic massage and positive touch therapy to premature babies and children in hospital to aid in healing, reduce pain, ease stress and anxiety, and promote bonding between parents and children. Interested parents and medical professionals will also to be taught by Amanda to provide therapeutic massage and positive touch therapy to their own children or children in their care. Finally, our charity offers supports to parents and families in the event of a child’s death through bereavement counselling before, during, and after a child’s passing. In addition to counselling sessions, and workshops for children who have lost a sibling, we have conducted workshops for bereaved parents, including our very popular “One Year On” workshops, where parents who have lost a child have the opportunity to meet as a group with our counsellors and share their unique experiences with others who understand.