£2,500 For Fabulous Freddie’s Wish Charity for Child Bereavement Services and Paediatric First Aid Training

The O’Brien Charitable Trust have donated to the Freddie’s Wish charity  for 4 years, as we wanted to help support the much needed and crucial bereavement and paediatric first aid services that the charity provides.

Why Freddie’s Wish was Started

The Freddie’s Wish charity was set up by Freddie’s family.  Freddie was sadly taken in a tragic car accident in December 2014 when he was just 13 months old.  Freddie’s mum Charlotte desperately wanted to seek help from other people that felt this intense emotional and physical pain she was feeling.  Unfortunately during this awful time no one seemed to be willing to help her.

The Aims of the Freddie’s Wish Charity

Freddie’s Wish aims to educate healthcare professionals and wider society in the importance of offering proactive support to bereaved parents to help them through the darkest of times.  It also signposts bereaved relatives towards support that may be relevant to their specific circumstances or provide support to the family directly.

Freddie’s Wish is also partnered with MDD First Aid to help fund first aid courses for parents/carers to give them the knowledge and skills to potentially save their child’s life. Sadly, Freddie ultimately lost his brave battle, but the CPR administered by his Dad at the scene of the accident gave the family time to say  goodbye to him. This proves that doing something in an emergency first aid situation is always better than doing nothing!

Charlotte said of this year’s donation;

We would love to spend the money more heavily towards our bereavement support service this time around. We have seen a huge influx of bereavement enquiries unfortunately since the pandemic, so much so that we have had to take on a new bereavement counsellor.

“Our bereavement support sessions cost £45 per session and we are currently supporting approximately 8-10 clients a month.  For 9 sessions that would be £405 a month. Then our online Grief Chat Support service which is provided through our website from 9-9 Monday to Friday costs £120 a month to run.  This equates to a total of £525 a month approximately.  We would love to put 3 months money towards our bereavement support service, totaling £1,575. 

The other £925 will be spent towards continuing our hard work in training families across Warwickshire in paediatric first aid. Each course costs £25 per person, so that would mean with your donation 37 people can be trained with us.”

For more information on Freddie’s Wish and the outstanding service it provides please click on the link:

https://freddieswish.org/about/