Zoe’s Place hospice saved by massive public effort

A Liverpool hospice which cares for infants and younger youngsters has been saved from closure after the local people raised greater than £6m in a month.

Zoe’s Place, which helps youngsters aged beneath 5 with persistent or life-limiting circumstances, lately introduced it must shut on the finish of the yr.

Now the charity’s trustees have confirmed it had obtained sufficient cash from people and companies to stay open.

Liverpool-based retailer TJ Morris Ltd, which trades as Residence Bargains, pledged £2.5m of the £6.4m goal, whereas native companies together with sportswear agency Montirex and the Sizzling Water Comedy Membership raised lots of of 1000’s.

Talking on the hospice as information of its survival was introduced, fundraiser Gina Earnshaw mentioned the previous few weeks had been “all-consuming”.

However she added: “All of the stress and all of the emotion it has been value it for this second proper now.”

Michelle Wright, head of care on the hospice, mentioned: “Phrases can’t categorical how I really feel.

“The truth that we will proceed to help our youngsters and households means every part and is all each member of the staff has wished to do.”

When it was introduced on 7 October that the hospice in Yew Tree Lane, West Derby, must shut, a number of affected households spoke of their devastation.

Stephanie Perry, whose three-year-old daughter Robyn attends twice per week, mentioned: “There’s nowhere else we will take our youngsters, our infants, the place they’re sorted, the place they’re secure and that we belief.”

Zoe’s Place, which additionally operates in Middlesbrough and Coventry, opened in Liverpool in 1995.

In October it mentioned a plan to maneuver to a brand new purpose-built web site close by had fallen by way of because of spiralling prices and a scarcity of time.

The deliberate closure meant 41 members of workers confronted shedding their jobs.

It later emerged the charity couldn’t use the constructing past June 2025 as a result of the constructing and land house owners, Catholic order The Institute of Our Woman of Mercy, had been leaving and promoting up.

Hopes had been restored after a fundraising marketing campaign, supported by West Derby MP Ian Byrne, gained traction with the general public in Merseyside and past.

Mr Byrne mentioned he “couldn’t be extra proud proper now to be a Scouser”.

“From children dropping their pocket cash into a set bucket, and aged individuals donating their pension, to native companies organising fundraising occasions and celebrities giving generously of their money and time, it actually has felt like the entire metropolis has come collectively during the last 4 weeks to avoid wasting Zoe’s – simply as I knew they might,” he mentioned.

Zoe’s Place mentioned the fundraising effort included comedy gigs and different sponsored occasions in addition to help from a few of the metropolis’s extra well-known little kids.

Ex-Liverpool footballer Robbie Fowler, musician Jamie Webster, blended martial arts fighters Paddy Pimblett and Meatball Molly, and comedians John Bishop and Adam Rowe have joined the marketing campaign.

Employees from the Liverpool Echo newspaper additionally performed a sponsored stroll from their metropolis centre workplace to West Derby.

Zoe’s Place mentioned a brand new charity had been shaped to tackle sole duty for the Liverpool web site and overseeing the development of a brand new hospice.

Mr Byrne additionally vowed to boost the broader challenge of funding for youngsters’s hospices in parliament.

He introduced a invoice on youngsters’s hospice funding to Parliament on 29 October, requiring the federal government to conduct a assessment of funding for hospices specialising within the care of kids and to ensure entry to hospices for all youngsters who want palliative care.

On 30 October he secured a Westminster Corridor debate on the problem and has written to the Chancellor Rachel Reeves.