Hospice welcomes first children

Building work on the hospice was completed last year

A new children's hospice in South Yorkshire will open its doors to its first residential families later.

More than £4m has been raised over the past 10 years for the Bluebell Wood Children's Hospice near Rotherham.

The hospice will care for terminally-ill children from across South Yorkshire, East Derbyshire and the north Midlands.

It will help up to 200 children and their families each year, at an annual cost of £2.4m.

Shona Tutin, Bluebell Wood's head of care, said: "Families need a safe place that they can come to and they need a place they can come to as a whole family.

"It's not a sad place to come to, it's a place where we just want to have fun with the children and promote quality of life for what is a really bad time for these families."

24-hour care

Building work at Bluebell Wood was completed in July 2007 and hospice staff have been providing day care since June this year.

Two bedrooms will open on Friday to provide 24-hour care for children in the final stages of their lives.

Fundraising for the hospice started in 1998 after the death of 11-year-old Richard Cooper, who had a rare degenerative disease.

The Richard Foundation was set up in his name to raise funds for a new hospice but the building could not be named after him because a Richard House Children's Hospice already exists in London.

The Richard Foundation remains as Bluebell Wood's registered charity name.