New B&M Partnership will Support Vital Neo Natal Unit at Alder Hey
29 June 2022 - All UK and Northern Ireland Charity News,North West Charity News
B&M is proud to announce an exciting partnership with Alder Hey and Procter & Gamble that will help enable customers to change the lives of families treated at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital – all by simply buying their Procter & Gamble everyday essentials at their local B&M store.
With every purchase of selected P&G products, a 5p donation from the sale will go directly to Alder Hey Children’s Charity, with a minimum donation of £55,000. So whether it’s Fairy washing up liquid, Daz laundry pods or Pampers baby wipes, your purchase will help change the lives of vulnerable babies and their families.
Your donations will help babies like Frankie
Even before Frankie had been born in March this year, he had already been diagnosed with a rare condition that would make his birth a little more complicated than usual.
Gastroschisis is a birth defect that causes baby’s bowels to be born outside of the stomach, and as a result surgery is essential within hours of birth.
But such an operation can only be done at specialised children’s hospitals, like Alder Hey in Liverpool. As such, after just a few minutes of cuddles with his mum Jessica, Frankie was taken from the hospital in which he was born at Arrowe Park, Birkenhead, to the specialised unit at Alder Hey.
The surgery was a success and Jessica and Frankie were soon reunited. And while his recovery is going well, Jessica was keen to share her stressful experience as a result of Frankie having to go to a different hospital to undergo surgery.
“I couldn’t be prouder of my son and I couldn’t be more grateful for every single staff member at Alder Hey”, she said. “It’s amazing to see how far he has come. We have had a few setbacks, but we always keep a positive mind.
“When your baby is away from you, you want to be able to go somewhere where you can see them, you want to feel safe and familiarised instead of going to a new place and being worried about your child, whilst also not knowing the people there.”
Jessica and Frankie’s experience is one of the reasons B&M has partnered with P&G to help change the lives of children and their families at Alder Hey.
How your donations will be spent
Plans around how the donations will be spent are to go towards helping create a new Surgical Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Alder Hey. The unit will offer 22 neonatal cots and will feature 18 individual family rooms in the unit, a first in the UK, where parents can be alongside their poorly new-borns while they’re receiving expert care.
The Charity Appeal is providing ‘over and above’ enhancements and equipment for both the clinical space and family areas, elevating the new Neonatal unit from a facility that provides families with a safe and secure environment for their new-borns, to a truly world-class facility that wraps-around families with the most vulnerable babies. Staff from Liverpool Women’s Hospital will work alongside Alder Hey staff at the new Surgical NICU ensuring that poorly babies are transferred between the two hospitals as little as possible.
Such facilities would certainly have made Jessica’s experience that bit more comfortable.
“The new NICU unit would have definitely benefitted us, going to different hospitals can be quite confusing and finding your way around can be quite stressful. If there was one place you could go for all of it, that would be amazing! It would also allow you to get to know the same staff members and start to form a little bond with them, the doctors, nurses, and other staff. When you start having conversations with these people and get familiar with a place, it makes you feel more comfortable.”
Currently babies born at nearby hospitals who need specialist surgery are transferred to Alder Hey to get the specialist surgical care they need and are then transferred back to their local hospital to continue their specialist neonatal care. The new NICU will ensure that babies do not need to be transferred back and forth between the two hospitals.
Fiona Ashcroft, CEO of Alder Hey Children’s Charity said, “We are delighted with this amazing partnership with one of the UK’s biggest retailers, B&M, and with P&G, producer of some of the world’s most iconic brands. The 5p per pack donation will help us quickly ensure we can support as many families as possible when their new-born babies are at their most vulnerable.”
"A charity close to our hearts"
Simon Arora, CEO of B&M said, “We’re delighted to launch this partnership and appeal to support a charity very close to our hearts. Being a Merseyside-based business, Alder Hey Children’s Charity has personally touched the lives of so many of our colleagues, their families and friends with the fantastic work they do to raise funds for life-saving specialist medical equipment and their patient-friendly campus. We’re pleased to be working alongside Proctor & Gamble with this appeal and support them in their continued commitment to be a force for good. Together, with help from our wonderful customers, we can help build a truly world-class facility for vulnerable babies in the region”.
B&M customers will easily be able to locate the products included by simply looking out for the Alder Hey & P&G branded feature bay ends at their local B&M store. The P&G products featured will include some of the biggest brands in health and beauty and cleaning including Fairy, Flash, Daz, Febreze, Fairy Non-Bio, Lenor, Ariel, Herbal Essences, Pantene, Oral B, Gillette, Venus, Always, Always Discreet and Pampers.
You can click here to see a selection of some of the great P&G products available, and head into store to make your purchase. Remember, 5p from every sale will be donated to Alder Hey Children’s Charity, so you can be sure that your purchase will make a difference.
For each selected Fairy, Flash, Fairy Non-Bio, Daz, Pantene, Always, Always Discreet and Pampers product purchased between 29/06/2022 and 27/07/2022, Procter and Gamble UK will donate £0.05 to Alder Hey Children’s Charity, Registered Charity England and Wales (1160661). A list of all products included in the donation can be found here.