Charity Trust

What Is The Rainbow Trust Children's Charity?

The Rainbow Trust Children's Charity is a charity that helps to support families and their children who have a life threatening or terminal illness. They support over 1,000 families a year.

A woman named Bernadette Cleary opened their home to 53 foster children and because of her kindness, she developed the Rainbow Trust Children's Charity in 1986. She helped two of her friends go through the hard times of their children's terminal illness. Through this process, she noticed that the families of a dying child, seemed to get lost in the ruffle because all attention was focused on the ill child. This is where the focus is suppose to be, but she realized that while the families, themselves, were focusing on the ill child, she would form a group that would focus on them.

She knew that if she supported these people, when and if the ill child died, the families would be more capable of moving on because of the support that she gave them. She helped the families with non-medical services in order to try to keep some sort of normalcy in their lives while going through the trauma of watching their child die.

The Rainbow Trust Children's Charity provides practical and emotional support to the families at the two respite houses that are provided or in their own homes. The Rainbow Trust Children's Charity supplies a family support worker to meet with the families and decide on what their specific needs are. The services are available 24 hours and 7 days a week for whenever they need it.

The Rainbow Trust Children's Charity also helps the families after a child has passed away. They help them to go through the bereavement process and to get back on their feet and move on. The Rainbow Trust Children's Charity categorizes all of their families in need and they put the families that have their child very close to their time of death a priority among any others. All the families get help in one way or another but the charity stays much closer to the ones that don't have a lot of time left.

A lot of these families would be lost without the Rainbow Trust Children's Charity to help them. There is hardly nothing more painful then parents and siblings about to lose part of their family especially being a young child. They need all the love and support that they can give and the Rainbow Trust Children's Charity is there for them every step of the way.