LATCH’S Annual Report 2020

FROM THE HONORARY PRESIDENT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2020

Do we really have the resilience?

A diagnosis your child has cancer or leukaemia is devastating. It turns the world upside down. Everything changes. Will our child live? Can we be with them during the long weeks in hospital? How will the other children manage? Must I give up work? Where can we go for help? How will we find the strength to cope? These critical questions and many more, the fear, the overwhelming anxieties, have always accompanied the diagnosis. That’s what it means for the whole family every year.

Yet 2020 was different. COVID came and turned the world upside down again. Not instead of, but in addition to having cancer: life threatening, invisible, terrifying, and not only attacking children and families, but everyone: medics, carers, staff, relatives, especially the vulnerable but this time their protectors as well. The pandemic brought unprecedented challenges to the Hospital. To meet the risks to life, wholesale reorganisation was necessary and was managed brilliantly. Two children’s wards had to be reassigned for adult treatment. The emergency departments for children were relocated. Nurses and other staff had to be
redeployed and retrained. Access to the Hospital was severely curtailed, even some parental presence at the child’s bedside had to be limited.

Yet despite this significant period of turmoil, the LATCH team, comprising of its administrative staff and the social workers, ensured that the care and support of patients and their families care was the priority at all times and within national policies and processes as the pandemic swept through Wales and the world. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to them and to the clinical teams led by Dr Cathy Morley-Jacob and Mrs Kathy Pearce, the senior ward manager, who once again raised their game to meet the exceptional demands. The contribution of the ambassadors and volunteers has never been more needed nor more valued.
2020, like no other year before, has proved that, under the continuing leadership of the Executive Chair and Trustees, LATCH does indeed have all the resilience we could possibly need.

Judge Philip Price Q.C.
Honorary President

Please follow the link below for LATCH’s Annual Report 2020. If you have any questions about the Annual Report then please just get in touch!

Statement from the Chair

LATCH’S Annual Report 2020

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