In this issue:

• Gordon Cottage | Lights, Kids, Action!
• Moments of serenity in Wards 1 and 4 Queen Margaret Hospital
• Large Grants awarded 2024/5
• Small Grant update: Winter 2024-5
• Micro Grants update: Winter 2024-5
• Art in our hospitals: The Community Gallery Space
• Our supporter and donation stories
• Message from our Charity Director
• Support us

Our successes | Grant-making stories

Gordon Cottage | Lights, Kids, Action!

What needs do children with special educational needs share?

Well, firstly just like other children, children with special education needs don’t all share the same needs. Some, like Paige, like stimulation, sensory activity and lots of it! Others such as Kieran, prefer a calm environment where they can avoid what they experience as sensory overload in everyday life. This is where the idea for the provision of a Sensory Haven for pre-school children with additional support needs from all over Fife came from.

What did the Fife Health Charity funding provide?

The charity grant was used to fund:

• Soft flooring and mats – creating space for children to relax.
• Colour changing lighting – this can be changed to suit and influence the child’s mood.
• Sensory toys – think bubble lamps to mesmerise and create wonder and light boxes to promote calm and reduce anxiety.
• Consoles with buttons to press and interact with

How have the children reacted?

Very positively! Paige for example, loves the toys – particularly the bubble lamps. Kieran enjoys rolling round on the soft floor mats and exploring all the exhibits on offer. Parents have also given the room a big thumbs up and believe that it’s a real game changer for children with complex needs as it is a room tailored to them with soft flooring, mood lighting and lots to look at, touch and play with. It has created a space for parents and carers to bond with their children through play and helps the staff in the centre to get to know and work with the children. The room can be found in Gordon Cottage, Kelty which is a centre for pre-schoolers with additional support needs in Fife (for information about the centre see here).

How did we do it?

Just £13,000 was required to create this unique space which was opened in January 2024. Balanced against the importance of promoting each child’s individual development and improving their health and wellbeing, we believe this is a real Fife Health Charity success story. Projects like this one are only possible due to the kindness and generosity of our charity’s supporters. Together we are making a difference – even for some of the youngest population of Fife.

Back to top

Moments of serenity in wards 1 and 4

Wards 1 & 4 Queen Margaret Hospital are acute admission and continuing assessment dementia wards. Patients on these wards have all been admitted with dementia or possibly another age-related illness. As such, these spaces are places where many older patients find themselves for a prolonged period of time, usually an average of around 6-12 weeks.

It was against this backdrop that the wards made a joint funding application to Fife Health Charity to see if they could get support to rejuvenate both the ward and the visiting spaces to make them more homely and also more dementia friendly.

The Charity responded with a donation of £15K per ward which was then used not to simply redecorate but to completely transform the wards. The Senior Charge Nurses and staff collaborated with local artist Karen Masters to create distinct zones, each with a different vibe. There were 2 ‘cafes’ created, one of which is called the Serenity Café in Ward 1, and the other, the Cherry Blossom, modelled on the cherry blossom trees in nearby Pittencrieff Park. Both cafes have menus on the wall and give the patients the impression of being out-and-about, despite sometimes not being able to leave the ward. Interestingly, the patient journey, is usually from Ward 1 to Ward 4 and for this reason, the team worked to ensure that Ward 4 mirrored Ward 1 in layout and design in order to make the transition from 1 to 4 more seamless. Added to the cafes, there is a comfortable visiting room complete with trolleys with treats and refreshments available for patients and families, a TV area and a quiet area with bookshelves and large print books. There is also an MP4 entertainment system so that staff can put on music for the patients when they are feeling up to it or when they have events or parties, with 60s tunes, country and Scottish music amongst the favourites.

Art in our hospitals | The Community Gallery Space

One of our key activities is managing the NHS Fife Art Collection.

Fife Health Charity owns a wide range of art gifted and purchased over a number of years for the benefit of NHS Fife.

In 2023 we decided to do something a bit different and created our first ever  Community Art Gallery in Queen Margaret Hospital as a permanent space to showcase temporary exhibitions alongside our permanent collection.  Based on the easily accessible ground floor, the charity funded this space to promote partnership opportunities with community arts groups and to enhance the wellbeing of patients and staff at Queen Margaret.  These exhibitions have met with great success and on walking through this corridor, which connects Phases 1 and 2 of the hospital, you will often see visitors and staff looking at artworks and discussing them.   The gallery space recently played host to the 'Old Dunfermline' exhibition which tracked the development of the city over the last 100 years, providing much discussion amongst those old enough to remember the shops, buildings and streets pictured.  Currently the space is hosting a completely different exhibition, Rhythm of the Seasons which looks at the seasons and at nature which artist Pauline McGee captures in vibrant colour and textures in mixed media which will run till March 2025.

We're also delighted to announce that plans are already afoot to bring a new gallery area to the Victoria Hospital in the new year and we will provide an update on this in our next newsletter. Watch this space!

Back to top

Our supporters | Donation stories

Below we share the stories behind some of our most recent donations and find out how they came about. The charity is incredibly grateful to all our supporters for their outstanding efforts and generosity to others. We know that everything we do is only made possible by their donations.

Cuddle beds provide lasting legacy

Helen, whose late husband was cared for at the Victoria Hospice, pledged her support to the charity after losing her husband. Selling her car was just one way in which Helen managed to raise an impressive £18,000 for the charity . Enlisting friends to help, and donating money from the funeral collection, she raised the money with a view to the hospice being able offer a SNOW bed. Such beds, larger than ordinary hospital beds, and alternatively known as cuddle beds, allow loved ones the comfort of being close together without getting in the way of medical equipment. These bed will provide closeness despite the clinical setting at what can be the end of life for some patients and will be Helen’s husband’s lasting legacy to the hospice. 

Cuddles all round

The Fife Specialist Palliative Care team are there for people at what can be the most challenging time of life. It was in recognition of their thoughtful care, that the family of Lynne Braisby who died in December 22, went on to raise an incredible £37,000 for Fife Health Charity. They were helped in this massive achievement by a donation from the Mary Leishman foundation, with Mary and Lynne having been great friends.

The family were delighted when the palliative care team had given the grandchildren a cuddly toy each before their grandmothers passing, with smaller versions of the toy remaining with Grandmother after her passing. Delighted and comforted by this initiative, called Continuing Bonds, the family vowed to raise funds with the view of providing many more cuddle toys in future whose loved ones are living with life limiting illness. So successful was this fundraising effort that a cuddle bed was also able to be purchased.

Braving the elements

We were thrilled that colleagues across NHS Fife services chose to raise funds for Fife Health Charity by taking part in one of Scotland’s Kiltwalks this year! The Kiltwalk offers intrepid fundraisers the chance to walk ‘the Wee Wander’ (5 miles); ‘the Big Stroll’ (11 miles); or ‘the Mighty Stride’ (20 miles) in Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen or Glasgow.

Their incredible fundraising efforts have raised over £6,000 for the charity to benefit specific services across Fife – a big thank you to everyone who took part. One of our very own Trustees (and NHS Fife Chief Executive) Carol Potter also took part with her husband in Edinburgh – in spite of the weather they finished with smiles on their faces knowing their efforts will help make a huge difference for people across Fife!

Follow the fishes

Back in January this year, the charity was delighted to receive a further donation of £1,000 from one of the Children’s ward top fundraisers Claire Chalmers and her family. Daughter Poppy had received care in the ward and it was important to them to see that funds were used to reduce anxiety in young patients upon entering the theatre suite. With the help of local mural artist Donna Forrester, the underwater-themed artwork was created, and subsequent young visitors are all invited to ‘follow the fishes’ in the hope of distracting them from their up-and-coming surgery.