Charity Skydive raises over £7,500 for appeal at local NHS Trust

 It will fund the creation of the ‘Serenity Suite’ on the Women’s and Children’s Ward at Doncaster Royal Infirmary (DRI), which will be a specially designed bereavement suite for families to utilise if they have sadly lost their new-born. Alongside the suite, the appeal will also allow the Trust to purchase a brand-new scanning machine for Bassetlaw Hospital’s Early Pregnancy Assessment Unit (EPAU) and enable the renovation of the counselling rooms at both DRI and Bassetlaw.

Lauren Wales, Laura Cooper, Olivia Hutchinson, Caitlin Hunt, and Nathaniel Redcliffe, who formed the team taking on the challenge of jumping from 15,000 feet, are all staff at DBTH who wanted to do their bit to support the appeal.

Laura Cooper spoke about why she wanted to take part in this charity challenge: “I wanted to help the Serenity Appeal and promote everything it stands for as I connected with it on so many levels, including on a professional basis. As a sonographer in the Trust, I often break unexpected bad news to patients and witness the heartache this has caused first-hand. Therefore, knowing I can personally better a patient’s experience allows me to give something back to them.”

Rhian Morris and Mathew Proctor are DBTH’s Bereavement Midwives and have been working hard to make their dream of improving DBTH’s maternity bereavement services a reality. Matt expressed his thanks to all who took part in the Skydive and emphasised the importance of events such as this: “I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who took part in the challenge, but also to everyone who donated to their efforts. Jumping out of a plane at 15,000 feet is not for the faint-hearted and we are grateful that they all faced their fears and took on the challenge for such an important cause.

“Raising over £7,500 is fantastic and gets us one step closer to achieving our overall target. Every little donation really does help so we are delighted with all the support that the appeal has received so far and hope that this continues.”

This charity skydive was one of three charity challenges organised by the Trust for the Serenity Appeal, with the first being The Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge which took place at the end of June and raised over £6,000 for the appeal. The final challenge will take place in October and will be a second skydive at Skydive Hibaldstow. To find out more about this challenge, please head to https://dbthcharity.co.uk/our-events/ and if you would like to participate, please contact Sarah Dunning, DBTH’s charity coordinator, on [email protected].

To obtain more information on the appeal as a whole, please click on this link https://dbthcharity.co.uk/serenity-appeal/.