The Pepper Foundation

www.pepper.org.uk "If you ask a sick child to describe the best place to be during their illness, they are likely to tell you - at home with my family" Pepper Nurse.



Who are they?

Good health is something we take for granted in our youth and any loving parents wish is that their children enjoy a happy and carefree childhood, without worry or pain. Sadly, some children are not so fortunate and can suffer from traumatic life-limiting and in some cases, terminal illnesses.

The suffering endured by these children and the stress and strain it brings to families can be unbearable.

The Pepper Foundation is a registered charity, which provides funds for The Pepper Children’s Nurses managed by The Iain Rennie Hospice at Home Service (IRHH). Our nurses provide much needed professional and loving home care on a 24 hour, 365 days of the year – on-call basis, for seriously ill children throughout the Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire area.



A Lifeline for Children and their Families

Today, Pepper aims to fund a team of five registered Paediatric Nurses, a Family Support Services Manager and a Pepper Children's Support Facilitator, to provide professional care for children – care which can greatly improve the quality of life of some who may only live for a few short years. The Pepper Children's Nurses ensure that a child's life, no matter how short, is made as comfortable and happy as possible.This is just one aspect of the valuable service The Pepper Children's Nurses give as they also provide a lifeline for the family of a seriously ill child whose world has been turned
upside down by their circumstances.

As well as caring for a child whose treatment can sometimes be distressing, they are able to return some degree of normality to families undergoing enormous upheaval, not to mention trauma and distress.



Why it's Important to Support This Charity

We received this email the other day from Karen Marshal-Rogers and she's very kindly said that we can reproduce it here.

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Hi

I have just read an article on Friars square website saying you are donating £2 to the Pepper Foundation for xmas photo's. It brought a lump to my throat. To see companies raising money for such an amazing charity is just what people like me want to see. We tragically lost our baby boy Seth to a very rare brain disease in June 2008. He was only diagnosed as terminal at 5 months of age and lost his fight aged 9 months. The Pepper foundation are amazing and without them we wouldn't have been able to bring our amazing baby home for the last weeks of his life. They helped us with Seth, our grief and also helped us prepare our 2.5 yr old for the imminent loss of his brother. I hope you don't mind me emailing, I just wanted to thank you for raising awareness of such a worth while charity. I hope you make lots for those amazing people. We owe a lot to them.

Regards

Karen Marshall-Rogers



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How We're Helping

Outside our shop in Friars Square there is a lovely big gingerbread house. Santa lives there between 11 and 5 on Tuesday to Friday and 10 - 5 Saturday and 10 - 4 Sundays. It's a free visit and the children get a free gift. We think it's great.

We are taking photographs in the grotto and when you get out you can view the photographs. If you wanted to purchase one then it's just £2 for a websized image, over printed with PeachyPics.net supporting Pepper. Or you could buy a high resolution file which we will email to you for just £7.50. You can print that almost as big as you like and as many times as you like. It will make a gorgeous Christmas card! If you don't have email you can buy a mounted 7 x 5 inch print for only £10.

£2 for each sale goes to the Pepper Foundation. So every penny from the web sized images goes to Pepper! We could of course have taken all the money for PeachyPics.net but we believe that Christmas is the time that we should all be doing our bit to support local charities and Pepper is such a good one. We are a family run studio. Andrea has four children and ten grandchildren and she is so grateful that we have never needed the service of anything like Pepper.

So even if you decide not to have one of the images from Santa's Grotto, please take the time to drop by the photo editing station outside the back door of the grotto and drop a donation into the collection box.