Daring to Dream® Fund

The 200 plus

Please be part of “The 200 plus”; help us reach our target of achieving a committed £1000 income per month by the 2019 Leading Wales Awards & Legacy Dinner on September 26th in support of Daring to Dream®!

Have you or a member of your family been a ward patient with really serious health issues? It is incredibly tough and scary being so ill; it is emotionally draining and demanding as well. Being a patient can also get boring! Even your visitors arrive wanting to talk about how you are, what’s been done and so on. I know sometimes I just wanted to say to them “I don’t want to talk about it!”

So, for a patient to be able to wash and dry their hair easily, of have it washed for them, to enjoy a bit of a musical interlude or practise mindfulness to help with the emotional impact of illness would be great. It would be more than great; it would make a real difference.

“Daring to Dream®” has been established as part of the legacy of the Leading Wales Awards. It is a named charitable fund whose mission is to provide ward-based goods, services and activities for patients (and groups of patients) to help enhance their emotional health and well-being. It is in partnership with Cardiff & the Vale Health Charity.

We have huge aspirations for this fund, and in 2019 we start in one clinical area, the Cardiothoracic Department at University Hospital of Wales (an extensive clinical area with three wards, outpatients’ clinics and more). This pilot leads the way in how Daring to Dream® can best support the emotional health and well-being of their patients and add value to the great work of the clinical teams who look after and care for their patients so well. We aspire to developing our reach to other clinical areas.

One of our main fund-raising campaigns of Daring to Dream® is to build the “The 200 plus” to provide regular income:

a) to provide regular weekly services and activities such as hairdressing for long term ward patients, musical interludes at the weekends and mini workshops in mindfulness etc to support patient emotional well-being and

b) to provide accessible funds for clinical staff to be able to buy whatever a patient needs to help them feel even more cared for, listened to and stronger emotionally e.g. some much-needed nightwear, refreshments for family members who can’t bear to leave their loved one in their final hours, and much, much more.

To provide for these, achieving a regular income is essential so that the Cardiology department can plan and schedule the ward-based services as regular happenings and without worrying about where the money comes from.

Our initial target for this campaign is to achieve £1000 per month of regular income.

How are we going to do this? One way is by lots and lots and lots of us donating a small amount (gift aided) each month.

Be part of “The 200 plus”:
• We only need 200 people each donating £5 per month by direct debit to create a monthly income of £1000 per month! (£5 per month is less than the cost of two coffees!)

Let’s just do this! Can we (the Awards’ network) achieve this target by the 2019 Leading Wales Awards & Legacy Dinner on September 26th! I think we can!

If we each donate a small amount each month, and pass on the request to 2 or 3 family members and / or close friends to also donate we can together make a real difference to help support the emotional health and well-being of ward patients.

Let’s do it! #thankyou #thankyou #diolch #diolch

Barbara Chidgey
Executive Chair, Leading Wales Awards and Project Coordinator for Daring to Dream®

The fund is managed (in terms of governance, investment, monitoring and administration) by the Community Foundation in Wales