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Demelza House provides respite and terminal care to children up to the age of 19 years. Support and relief is given to the families of children with life-threatening or limiting conditions in a home-from-home environment. They welcome the whole family, helping them to cope through an illness that may last many years, and then later into bereavement. Illnesses vary from metabolic and neurological degenerative conditions, such as Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, Batten's Disease, to life-threatening conditions - cancer or heart disease.
Situated within a 6 acre site in rural Kent at Bobbing, near Sittingbourne, Demelza House serves Kent, East Sussex and South East London. There are eight children's beds and 12 bedrooms - for parents and other children to stay.
They believe in helping the sick children to make the most of the precious time they have. Specialist facilities include a multi-sensory room, jacuzzi, playroom and wet-play facilities, computer room, and a music room. The landscaped gardens, designed to stimulate, entertain and delight the children during their stay, incorporate play areas with specially adapted equipment for wheelchair users, and an Adventure House for climbing, sliding and fun in the sand. In addition there are ponies in the paddock and a number of pets - including the Demelza House guinea pigs! Within the Oast chapel, families can quietly pray or reflect.
Caring for a very sick child is immensely hard. Parents have to attend to their children twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, knowing that they will have to cope with their child's death. Sometimes they would like a full night's sleep undisturbed, to go for a walk with their other children, or just "recharge their batteries."
At Demelza house, they can choose to do all of these in the knowledge that staff are available to take on the caring rôle for them in an informal homely setting.Children and their families will be able to stay for short term respite, that is, a long weekend or mid-week break, with one or two longer stays being available once or twice a year.
When their child eventually requires terminal care, Demelza House provides a special place when children can lie following death, where the family can spend time in saying goodbye, with the support of the staff to help them through this difficult period.
Relying almost entirely on voluntary financial support and the dedication of many friends, companies, charitable trusts and other benefactors, Demelza House needs £1.25 million each year to give a special kind of care for the children and their families.
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