On Sunday 21st April, Adelaide Daniels, from Braintree, will be lacing up her running shoes, ready to take on the challenging and iconic London Marathon to raise vital funds and spread awareness about Little Havens, a hospice which provides specialist care and support for babies, children and young people living with complex or incurable conditions.
Adelaide has been inspired to run the 26.2 miles for Little Havens, as her son, Oscar, has been cared for by them for five years.
Oscar was born with quadriplegia cerebral palsy, a four-limb movement disorder. More recently, in 2021, Oscar’s gut started to fail. He also had a burnout from dystonia, another movement disorder Oscar lives with, which affected his brainstem and is something he cannot recover from.
Oscar and his family visit Little Havens for respite and symptom management. Oscar has everything he loves around him, and the respite can be fun on his good days, or it can be a restful stay with around-the-clock care. They are also supported by the charity’s Community Team at home, which means that the whole family are given “a chance to rest”.
Adelaide says, “It’s much more to us than respite, they help to get the best out of each day for Oscar. They want to make Oscar happy, and that’s what Little Havens does for us as a family; nothing is impossible. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of life without Little Havens is loneliness. With Little Havens, we are surrounded by people who understand what you’re going through and love our children as much as we do. It would be a very, very lonely time without them.”
Fundraising for the hospice is Adelaide’s way of giving something back to the charity and thanking them for the support they have provided in some of her family’s toughest times.
She continued, “Without the fundraising, Little Havens wouldn’t exist. It’s so much more than somewhere children come to be cared for, they come here to be loved, to be supported, to be themselves. Please don’t stop fundraising because it wouldn’t exist without you. To anyone who has ever supported Havens Hospices, you’ve given families like mine a lot – so much more than you will ever know.”
To sponsor Adelaide and support her fundraising efforts, visit https://www.justgiving.com/page/adelaide-daniels-1708523461994
Little Havens is a part of Havens Hospices, a registered charity and relies on the generosity of the community to fund its specialist hospice care free of charge to families across Essex. For more information about fundraising, visit www.havenshospices.org.uk/fundraising
Published 11th March 2024
