To highlight Child Life Week in March, the Child Life Department at Texas Children’s Hospital held its eleventh annual “Teddy Bear Clinic.” Patients – and young visitors – can “register” their teddy bears, then proceed through the clinic for a complete check-up of their plush pal. The check-up includes vital signs, immunizations, x-rays, splints and bandages for “broken” bones and more, each presented by the appropriate Hospital department staff. As their toys’ companions, the children engage in educational activities that give them a greater awareness of various departments in the health care setting.

Radio Lollipop was invited this year to participate and start a new tradition! As always, we were the hit of Teddy Bear Clinic. We played music, provided a “teddy bear” craft for the patients to do for their bear, and danced in the aisles! Some Hospital employees, especially the staff of the Pain Service, joined us in singing and dancing along with “YMCA.” We had the place jumping and received numerous compliments about how much more festive the event was this year. Child Life staff are looking forward to having us join them again next year!

Radio Lollipop Uniform Free Day (UFD) is the Perth (Australia) Public Transport Authority’s major fundraising event and has been supported by Transperth for 11 years.

Bus, Train and Ferry drivers across the city support the cause by dressing up and collecting spare change for Radio Lollipop.

This year’s event will be held on Wednesday 21st March 2007.

Each year more than $50,000 AU is raised which to assist Radio Lollipop to provide care, comfort, play and entertainment to children hospitalised at Princess Margaret Hospital and other local and regional hospitals.

All donations from Radio Lollipop Uniform Free Day go directly to Radio Lollipop. Transperth thanks all passengers and Transperth system operators for their continued support of this event.

Following a recent appeal for schools and organisations to do a toy drive for their local Lollipop station, the children of Kingston Park Primary school cleaned out their cupboards and gave all of their unwated toys to Radio Lollipop Newcastle.

Newcastle fundraiser Emma Palmer said “my sister goes to the school and they have been superb in the past for helping other charities so I decided to get in touch and see if they’d be willing to help Lollipop Newcastle.

The response was phenomenal and the amount of toys we received far exceeded what we expected. We are very grateful to the pupils and staff at Kingston Park for their efforts in bringing, collecting and sorting the toys”.

Chairlady Sheila Brown said “All of the donations received on the day will be put to good use at the hospital. You would be amazed at how far the donations can go! Several of the toys have already been given to specific wards so that all of the children on those wards will benefit.”

Newcastle’s Play Co-ordinator Helen Hudspith said “often when we get toys donated, people don’t realise what an incredible impact they can have on sick kids in terms of improving their health and well-being. From Kingston Park, we received a couple of musical footprint floor mats. We gave one to the children’s cancer ward and a parent explained to us that her child had hardly been out of bed following a painful operation. The musical mat had encouraged the child to get up and walk around and was speeding up the child’s recuperation.

It’s really rewarding when we hear that the toys are being used to help the kids to get better because it reinforces the theory that underpins all of Radio Lollipop’s work – our belief in the healing power of play”.

The donation of toys from Kingston Park has also saved Radio Lollipop about £200 that we would have spent on prizes for the children and we hope to forge more links with the school in future, to return the favour by providing music for their annual fete events.