Imagine This | Supporting Children's Health

Imagine This

Category: Project-No-Image

  • Bags of Sunshine

    Bags of Sunshine

    When a parent has to leave hospital without their child, they shouldn’t have to leave feeling completely alone.
    Bags of Sunshine are thoughtfully created bereavement bags, given with love to parents at one of the hardest moments of their lives. Your support today means the next 200 bags can reach families who need them.

    There are no words for the moment a parent walks out of a hospital without their child.

    Everything that was their world, is suddenly behind them. The ward. The nurses who knew their baby’s name. The machines they learned to read. All of it, left behind. The life they imagined for their child. The memories they would build together.

    What they carry out is grief. And in the midst of that grief, they need to know: somebody thought of you. You are not invisible. You are not alone.
    The bags began with Aimee and Mark Beaumont, Freddie’s mum and dad. After losing their son, they came to Imagine This with an idea: to create something for the parents who walk out of hospital without their child. Something warm. Made with care in Freddie’s memory. Together we made it happen.

    Aimee and Mark have been hand-delivering 100 bags to bereavement teams across the North of England, including Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, Salford Royal, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Salford Royal’s community team, and Blackpool Teaching Hospitals. More hospitals are now asking for them, having heard from colleagues about the difference they make. The demand has grown far faster than anyone expected.

    Inside every bag:

    – Jute Bag
    – Weighted Teddy
    – Lip Balm
    – Candle
    – Notebook & Pen
    – Wildflower seed packets
    – Cooling face mask
    – Tangle Toy
    – A fidget ring
    – Tissues
    – Info Leaflets
    – Tea Sachets
    – Coffee Sachets
    – Biscuits
    – Organza Bags
    – Short Stories – by Donna Ashworth
    One bag arrived at the hospital; Aimee was handing them out when they met a recently bereaved family. They fell in love with the weighted soft animal in the bag, a sloth, because it had been the child’s spirit animal; he had carried a sloth everywhere. The bag felt like it had been made for them.

    The teddies have brought comfort not just to the parents who receive them, but to the siblings left behind too.

    A nurse receiving bags for her bereavement team wrote:
    “In those darkest moments, the kindness behind these bags offers a gentle reminder that they are not alone, and that others are holding them in their hearts.”

    Another wrote:
    “I would like to extend our heartfelt thanks for the generous donation of the support bags. These will make a profound difference to parents facing the unimaginable pain of losing a child unexpectedly. Thank you for recognizing this need and for helping us offer dignity, warmth and understanding to families during the most difficult of times.”

    No bag undoes what has happened. But they can create a spark of hope.

    These bags are designed to be opened later, in the quieter, harder days that come after. The candles lit on a difficult evening. The seeds planted in a moment of quiet hope. The notebook opened when something needs to be written down.
    The weighted animal. Held.

    Each item was chosen not to fix anything. But to say: We are still here. We are still thinking of you.

    The first round of bags has been delivered. The response has been extraordinary. More hospitals across the North of England are already asking for them. The need hasn’t slowed down.
    Aimee put it perfectly:
    “Such a strange mix of emotions: being both incredibly proud, and so sad that these are in such demand.”

    With your support, we can fund the next 200 bags and reach every hospital that has asked.

    A gift of £44.50 could pay for a complete bag for one bereaved family. Or you can give whatever feels right:

    – £14.79 could pay for the weighted teddy that brings comfort through the night
    – £4.92 could cover the cost of the bag, stitched and printed with love
    – £4.47 could cover a candle and a notebook: small comforts for long, quiet evenings
    – £0.76 could plant wildflower seeds: a quiet symbol of hope

    Your kindness means a bag will be waiting for a parent who needs it. Because of you, they won’t leave hospital feeling alone.
    Thank you for caring.

    Support Bags of Sunshine

  • Positivity In Motion

    Positivity In Motion

    Because of you, a child on a hospital ward gets to dance.
    Positivity in Motion takes dance, yoga, music, mindfulness and creative movement directly onto hospital wards. Not to the playrooms or the leisure areas, but to the bedsides of seriously ill children who can’t get there themselves.

    The children who benefit most are often the hardest to reach. Children in intensive care, on high dependency units, in isolation rooms. Children who haven’t left their ward in weeks. Some are seven months old. Some are eighteen. Some have complex medical needs, limited mobility, or no shared language with the therapist. Some have IV lines in their arms.

    The session comes to them.

    In partnership with our delivery partner, Synergy Dance Outreach, Imagine This funds weekly ward visits where therapists bring movement, music and creativity to the bedside. They read the room. If a child can’t use their right arm, the session uses the left. If a child’s exhausted and wants to watch from bed, that’s fine. If a toddler waiting for a transplant needs nursery rhymes sung quietly at the bedside, that’s what happens.

    A girl has a cannula in her hand. When the therapist says they’re going to dance, she jumps off the bed so fast with excitement, the alarm on her machine keeps going off! She thinks it’s a party! And when the session eventually ends and the therapist has to leave, she bursts into tears…this is how meaningful these sessions are for these children.

    An eighteen-year-old does a full yoga session with her mum beside her. Afterwards, her mum asks how to enrol her daughter in regular classes when she’s well enough to go home!

    Not every child wants to join in, and that’s fine too. A girl who’s known to lash out sits quietly through a whole session, calm, with scarves and music!

    Parents get something out of it too.

    A few minutes where they’re not carrying everything. Siblings find somewhere to be that isn’t just waiting. Nurses look over from across the ward, and you can see their faces change with the sound of children laughing.

    “We need you here every day.”
    Hospital Play Therapist, 

    “It was so helpful for me to have someone entertain my daughter while I was being cared for.”
    Parent

    “The sessions helped my daughter relax and gave her something to look forward to.”
    Parent of a teenage participant

    “Seeing the smiles on the children’s faces, even just for a short while, makes such a difference.”
    Hospital Nurse


    So far

    Imagine This has funded Positivity in Motion at Great Ormond Street Hospital and Evelina London Children’s Hospital. We’re bringing it to two more hospitals in 2026 and 2027 and we couldn’t be more excited.

    Support projects like Positivity in Motion

  • Music Therapy at Noah’s Ark NICU

    Music Therapy at Noah’s Ark NICU

    A new baby should come home to lullabies. When they arrive in intensive care instead, music therapy means the lullabies come to them.
    In the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospital in Wales, your support funded music therapy sessions that bring calm, connection and comfort to babies and their families.

    The NICU is unlike anywhere else.

    Alarms. Fluorescent lights. The constant, necessary hum of machines keeping tiny babies alive. Parents who’ve barely slept, sitting beside incubators, holding the hand of a baby they longed for, frightened in a way they did not know fear could feel.
    Into that environment, every week, comes music.
    Not recorded. Not played from a phone. Live music, played by a specialist therapist who listens first to the rhythm of a baby’s breathing, the sounds they make, the pace of their world. And then she builds the music around them.

    Baby Kendra is Rebecca and Alexis’s third baby. Her older siblings were born overdue after uncomplicated pregnancies. Kendra’s arrival was very different.
    Rebecca’s waters broke at almost 30 weeks. She was rushed first to Bridgend, then to Bath, the nearest place with a NICU bed for a baby so small. Kendra was born at 31 weeks and 2 days. Within a week, she had been transferred back to Bridgend. But when attempts were made to move her onto lower breathing support, her progress faltered. Tests revealed she had two congenital heart defects requiring open heart surgery in Bristol. The operation lasted eight hours. Then came the intensive care unit, and over a week of anxious waiting before Kendra was well enough to come off the ventilator.

    Then another blow. As a consequence of her body working so hard to compensate for her heart, Kendra had developed chronic lung disease. Weeks more apart, while her breathing improved.

    Within the first few weeks of her life, Kendra had been a patient in neonatal intensive care units in Bath, Cardiff, and Bridgend, and in the paediatric intensive care unit in Bristol. She had barely known anything except clinical settings. Beeps. Alarms. The sounds of machines.

    Rebecca says:

    “It’s the small and the big things that hit you, from choosing how and what you feed your baby to introducing them to family and friends. There were things I took for granted with my other children, like going to a baby group or just taking them out for a walk in the pram, that I haven’t been able to do with Kendra. There are parts of being a mum that are taken away from you while you’re in hospital and that’s really hard.”

    And then music therapy arrived.

    “When we were first offered music therapy here at Noah’s Ark, I didn’t think much of it, but it turned out to be the most lovely experience. Kendra was a bit apprehensive at first but now I can see her visibly relaxing during the sessions. She becomes very alert and watches music therapist Becca’s every move. She’s even started reaching out for the instruments she likes best.”

    “It’s amazing to watch her really enjoy something after all she’s been through. Witnessing that impacts on my happiness too, so it’s like therapy for us both. Kendra has only really lived in a clinical setting, so instead of hearing the sound of her siblings playing, she’s heard beeps and alarms. The music therapy sessions somehow take us away from that for a while. They give us time to bond and just be a mum and her baby enjoying something together. During a stressful and difficult time, it’s given us both happiness.”
    Rebecca, Kendra’s mum

    The therapist responds. She follows the baby’s lead and creates something that meets them exactly where they are.

    “We have loved our visits from the music therapist. She tunes into the children’s breath to lead the music.”
    Parent, Noah’s Ark NICU

    Even the smallest, most fragile patients respond. Their bodies soften. Their breathing settles.

    100% of NICU staff agreed that music therapy sessions are valuable to the families they work with.

    For a parent in the NICU, the arrival of a music therapist is the arrival of something human in a world that can feel overwhelmingly clinical.

    Your support makes that possible.

    Support Projects like Music Therapy at Noah's Ark NICU

  • Art Therapy at Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice

    Art Therapy at Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice

    At Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice, your support enabled art therapy sessions that gave seriously ill children a creative language and a way to find joy, calm, and self-expression when words are not enough.

    There are things a child living with a serious illness carries that they just can't put into words.

    Fear. Confusion. A longing for things to feel normal.
    Art therapy doesn’t ask them to find those words. It offers something different: clay, colour, texture, music, and the freedom to make something entirely their own.

    Your support helps deliver a series of art therapy sessions at Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice, facilitated by expert art therapist Lauren. Each session welcomes up to eight children: children with complex needs and life-limiting conditions, children with very different experiences of the world.

    Across 20 sessions, around 160 young people take part.

    They press their hands into clay tiles that they can keep. They fill sensory bottles with things that calm them. They make textured collages and personalised photo frames, keepsakes that belong to them. They sing, gently, with Lauren and her ukulele.

    These are not art classes with right answers and finished projects. They are spaces of guided, gentle creativity where children can process what they are experiencing, express feelings that have no other outlet, and find moments of calm and delight in the middle of a very difficult chapter.
    A child who can’t walk can still press their hands into clay and create.
    A child who finds words difficult feels safe to explore their emotions.
    A child who is frightened starts to relax and feel confident.

    Creativity isn't a luxury for a seriously ill child. For many, it's one of the few places they feel truly free.

    It’s a space where nothing is clinical. Where their hands are busy and their minds are quiet. Where they can find imaginative ways to express how they feel.

    Your support has helped give a child a lump of clay, a handful of colours, and a space that is entirely theirs. It gave them a tile they pressed their own hands into. A song they sang. A bottle they filled with things that calmed them.
    Small things. Lasting things.
    The kind of thing you carry with you long after the session is over.

    Support projects like Art Therapy at Northern Ireland Children's Hospice

  • CHAS Grandparents Retreat

    CHAS Grandparents Retreat

    They hold everyone together. Who holds them? The Grandparents Retreat gives grandparents of children with life-shortening conditions something they rarely get: a space that’s just for them.

    When a child is seriously ill, everyone rallies. Friends visit. Meals arrive. Messages flood in. Parents are surrounded by people. And somewhere in that circle, quiet and steady, doing whatever needs to be done, are the grandparents.

    They’re watching their grandchild suffer. They’re watching their own child, the parent, falling apart. And they’re quietly expected to be strong for both.


    Zelma knows this. Her grandson Jack loved Julia Donaldson books and Thomas the Tank Engine. They spent most days together, reading, baking, playing with trains, exploring the woods. In September 2023, Jack became poorly. In October, he was diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma. He died in April 2024. Zelma still carries him with her every day.

    “I wish people understood that grandparents have to be strong for everyone: the parents, the child, and other affected family members. We often become the givers of information and the main emotional support system, making sure everyone else is coping. Because we are so focused on supporting others, people often forget that we need support too. The layer of grief we carry is unique and significant. We are grieving both the loss of our grandchild and the pain of our own child.”

    Zelma, grandmother


    In partnership with Children’s Hospices Across Scotland (CHAS), Imagine This funds an overnight retreat at Ardoch, a beautiful retreat centre on the shores of Loch Lomond. Time set aside entirely for grandparents. Not as carers. Not as supporters. As people who are themselves in need of care.

    Colin and Kirsty lost their granddaughter Layla on 6 February 2023. She was an identical twin, with her sister Sophia.

    Colin wrote:

    “Life will never be the same when we lost Layla. I have never cried as much. It is not the way it should be. I feel that our baby girl should not have gone first. The pain I see my daughter, son-in-law and wife in remains deeply painful. Over time there is just always something missing, our wee Layla.”

    Kirsty wrote a letter to Layla. In it she described what it’s like to be a bereaved grandparent: the grief that arrives suddenly and never fully lifts. “Layla, your papa and I suddenly became part of a group that no one ever wants to join, that of bereaved grandparents.”


    That grief has no obvious home. Grandparents may rarely be asked how they are. They aren’t the patient. They aren’t the parent. They live in the space between, loving deeply, grieving silently, carrying more than anyone sees.


    Over one overnight stay, grandparents come together with people who understand.

    Most of this goes unseen. Grandparents often take on enormous caring responsibilities while suppressing their own grief entirely. They have nowhere to process what they’re going through, and they can feel completely alone in it.

    A single retreat doesn’t fix that. But it says something: you matter too. Your grief is real. You don’t have to hold it alone.

    And sometimes, that’s everything.


    Your support gives grandparents time away. Where the weight they carry can be set down for a little while. Where the grief they’ve been holding quietly finally finds some company.

    Because they deserve that. And so do the families they hold together.


    Support projects like the Grandparents Retreat

  • Gaming and Technology Fund

    Gaming and Technology Fund

    When you’re twelve and you’ve been in hospital for a month, your friends’ gaming sessions don’t wait for you…The group chat keeps going. Your teammates find someone else to fill your spot. You’re lying in a bed that isn’t yours, and the world is moving on without you. RockinR Gaming Carts put that connection back in the room.

    They’re purpose-built for hospitals – mobile and height-adjustable, so they reach children wherever they are: in bed, lying flat, in a wheelchair. They’re easily cleaned for infection control, so children with compromised immune systems can use them safely. Games come pre-loaded, so there’s no risk of discs going missing on a busy ward. And they connect online, so a child in a hospital bed can sit down to a multiplayer game with a friend who’s ten miles away on their sofa.

    “The Xbox cart really helps me when I’m staying in hospital for a long time. It’s a brilliant distraction and means I don’t feel as bored when I’m feeling lonely, poorly or worried.”

    – Young patient


    For a while, they're just playing. That matters more than it sounds.

    Here’s something that stopped us: across the UK right now, there are around 90 RockinR gaming carts sitting in hospital corridors and storage cupboards. Not in use. Out of action because they need repairs or maintenance. Ninety carts. Ninety children at a time who could be gaming but aren’t.

    We’ve set ourselves the challenge of getting every single one back on the road.

    There are 27 dedicated children’s hospitals and 50 children’s hospices across the UK. Our goal is for every site to have at least two fully equipped RockinR Gaming Units – working, on the wards, where the children are. One cart costs around £3,400. Your support could fund the next one, or get an existing cart fixed and back in the hands of a child who’s been waiting long enough.


    Support projects like the Gaming and Technology Fund

  • Drama Therapy at Noah’s Ark

    Drama Therapy at Noah’s Ark

    At Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice in North London, your support funds specialist drama therapy for seriously ill children, and for the siblings and families who need somewhere to put what they’re feeling too.

    Some feelings are too big for words. Drama therapy gives children another way.

    Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice is where children from across North London with the most complex, life-threatening conditions come for care. For many families, it becomes a second home. A place of hope. Of love.

    The medical team looks after children’s bodies. You help look after their minds.

    When Arthur was born in February 2023, his parents Christina and Jack were told he had severe Hypoxic-Ischaemic Encephalopathy, a brain injury caused by a lack of oxygen at birth. They were told he was unlikely to survive coming off his ventilator. The family was referred to Noah’s Ark, where Arthur received music therapy, movement therapy, and sessions in Tunes and Tales, the drama therapy group for young children.

    Thankfully, Arthur’s condition improved. By May 2023, his clinicians reversed his do-not-resuscitate order.

    But Arthur has an older brother. Joseph is nine years old, and he loves his little brother with everything he has.

    Joseph started to withdraw. He put on a front at school. He told everyone he was fine. He came home and was angry and upset. He was carrying something enormous and had nowhere to put it.

    So Joseph came to drama therapy.

    Children come for one-to-one sessions shaped entirely around them, or for group sessions like Tunes and Tales, a musical group that wraps therapy in something that feels like fun. Some tell stories. Some play. Some just need somewhere safe to be.


    Christina describes what happened:

    “It was his safe space. He knew that he could come every Wednesday and have his time with Pasha. It was his outlet and because he is quite a tactile young person, he loved the play and the movement side of the therapy. Dramatherapy made it much more easy for him to talk, because Joseph is a master of distraction and if you ask him any kind of question he will manipulate the conversation so he does not have to answer it.”

    Something shifted. His school noticed it.

    “His school noticed that after the sessions with Pasha, he was actually able to start opening up to his teachers and to verbalise what was on his mind, saying things like ‘Arthur is in hospital today’ or ‘I am feeling a bit worried.’ When we told Joseph his little brother might not be here that long, it was a very difficult conversation to have. Now, after the session with Pasha, he is much more comfortable talking about these things.”

    Christina, Joseph’s mum

    Drama therapy didn’t change Arthur’s diagnosis. But it changed what Joseph could carry, and that changes everything for the whole family.

    Pasha Wild, Drama and Movement Therapist at Noahu2019s Ark, describes the work:

    “Dramatherapy is a rehearsal space for life. It is an opportunity for a young person to have a safe, secure place where they can get things wrong, where they can struggle, where they can practice their lines and rehearse difficult situations. They can say things to people in a therapeutic space that they would not necessarily feel safe saying to someone in the real world.”

    Pasha Wild, Drama and Movement Therapist, Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice

    Your support means drama therapy reaches children throughout the hospice, not just the children in the beds. The siblings who are so rarely asked how they are. The parents who are carrying something enormous and deserve a space of their own.

    For a child who can't find the words for what they feel, this isn't an extra. It's essential.

    Drama therapy helps them say things that feel too frightening to say out loud. And for siblings like Joseph, it gives them somewhere to finally put down what they’ve been carrying.

    Your support makes every one of those sessions possible. Every Wednesday. Every child. Every Joseph.


  • IMRI Suite at University Hospital Southampton

    IMRI Suite at University Hospital Southampton

    The iMRI Suite at University Hospital Southampton is now fully operational. Funded by the community, suggested by the surgeons, and built with one purpose: to give every child the best possible chance, in one operation, close to home.

    What this community raised together changed the future for children with brain tumours in Southampton.

    Before we became Imagine This, we were The Murray Parish Trust. We were a charity founded by two parents who lost their daughter, determined to do something. And the biggest thing we ever did, before we rebranded and grew into the national charity we are today, was this.

    In partnership with University Hospital Southampton, we changed what is possible for children undergoing brain surgery in Southampton.

    In June 2025, the iMRI Suite became fully operational. And from that day forward, approximately 200 children every year who come to University Hospital Southampton for brain surgery receive something their predecessors could not: precision in real time, fewer operations, less time sedated, and a better chance.

    For a child with a brain tumour, surgery is terrifying enough. For many families, it was also only the beginning.

    Because sometimes, even after surgery, surgeons couldn’t be certain they’d removed everything. Without being able to see clearly in real time, they had to make difficult judgement calls. Which sometimes meant a child coming back for a second operation. And sometimes meant a journey across the country that a family should never have had to make.

    Keisha was nine years old when she was first diagnosed.

    When her tumour returned at thirteen, there was no intraoperative MRI available in Southampton. To give her the best possible chance, her family had to travel six hours to Liverpool for surgery. Her treatment continued for four more years. She died at seventeen.

    She is why this appeal mattered. And she is why the people who gave to make it happen have changed the future, for every child who comes after her.

    An intraoperative MRI scanner allows surgeons to perform a brain scan during the operation itself, in real time, without moving the patient.

    Before it existed, surgeons finished an operation and hoped they’d seen enough. Now they can scan mid-surgery, assess what’s been removed, identify what remains, and continue in the same sitting.

    “Where it is difficult to tell between healthy tissue and a tumour, we would err on the side of caution rather than inflict damage to the child. The iMRI would mean we could operate in one sitting.”

    Dr Aabir Chakraborty, Lead Consultant Neurosurgeon, University Hospital Southampton

    When the suite opened in June 2025, Sarah Parish MBE and Jim Murray MBE said:

    “The iMRI scanner is transformative, both medically and emotionally. It allows critically ill patients to undergo safer, more effective procedures. We know first-hand how terrifying it is when a child is undergoing surgery. This iMRI scanner helps to reduce the anxiety and distress for both the child and their family. Knowing this scanner is there to guide surgeons in real time is deeply reassuring. We are so proud to have helped bring this technology to Southampton and are incredibly grateful to everyone who made it possible.”

    Sarah Parish MBE and Jim Murray MBE

    Paul Grundy, Chief Medical Officer at University Hospital Southampton, said:

    “The state-of-the-art iMRI scanner is a game-changer for UHS, giving surgeons the ability to obtain real-time, live images during surgery. This technology enables quicker diagnosis and treatment planning. It reduces risks as well as the need for repeat procedures, enhancing the overall recovery of our patients.”

    Paul Grundy, Chief Medical Officer, University Hospital Southampton

    You are part of what made this happen.

    The iMRI suite is built, funded, and open. For every child who comes to Southampton for brain surgery from now on, what is possible has changed.

    What this community raised together is permanent. It cannot be undone.

    This is what giving to Imagine This achieves. Not just today. For years and decades to come.

    The iMRI project was completed under our previous name, The Murray Parish Trust. We rebranded to Imagine This in July 2025 as we grew our mission nationally. If you’d like to support a current Imagine This project, explore what we’re working on now.