Serious illness affects more than a child’s physical health. Across the UK, over one million children are living with conditions that require ongoing treatment, long hospital stays, or intensive medical care. Alongside pain and procedures, many face fear, anxiety, trauma, and isolation - often from a very young age.

For these children, childhood is interrupted. Days are shaped by appointments, hospital wards, and recovery, rather than play, friendships, and routine. While medical treatment is vital, a child’s mental and emotional wellbeing is too often overlooked. Evidence shows that seriously ill children are far more likely to experience anxiety, low mood, and long-term psychological trauma - impacts that can last long after treatment ends.

Access to specialist mental health support for these children remains limited or inconsistent, particularly within clinical settings. Yet creative and therapeutic interventions can play a powerful role in helping children cope, process their experiences, and reconnect with moments of joy and normality.

That’s why Imagine This exists - to ensure mental wellbeing is treated as an essential part of care for seriously ill children. Through imaginative, therapeutic projects delivered in hospitals, hospices, and community settings, we help children find calm, connection, and hope during the most difficult moments of their lives.

Your fundraising can ensure seriously ill children receive the emotional support they need

Kendra is Rebecca and Alexis’ third child. After a pregnancy filled with monitoring and uncertainty, everything changed suddenly when Rebecca’s waters broke at just under 30 weeks. Kendra was born at 31 weeks and 2 days and taken straight into neonatal intensive care. Although she was doing well for a baby born so early, attempts to reduce her breathing support revealed two congenital heart defects, meaning she would need open-heart surgery.

At just weeks old, Kendra underwent an eight-hour operation and spent time in paediatric intensive care. By this point, she had already been cared for in neonatal units in Bath, Cardiff and Bridgend, as well as intensive care in Bristol. Just as her parents began to hope they might soon be heading home, Kendra developed chronic lung disease, meaning weeks more in hospital and more time apart from their other children.

Rebecca speaks about the quiet heartbreak of missing everyday moments many parents take for granted - feeding her baby freely, introducing her to family, or taking her out in the pram. Much of Kendra’s early life was spent in a clinical environment, surrounded by machines, alarms, and uncertainty.

During this incredibly difficult time, music therapy became a rare moment of calm and connection. Kendra began to visibly relax during sessions, becoming more alert and engaged, even reaching out for the instruments she enjoyed most. For Rebecca, the sessions offered something just as powerful - time to bond with her baby, to enjoy something together, and to feel like a mum again, not just a parent in a hospital setting.

“It’s like therapy for both of us,” Rebecca says. “After everything she’s been through, seeing her enjoy something brings happiness back into our lives.”