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Our Aim

Our Nutri-Care initiative aims to raise £7,500 annually through our JustGiving campaign to help us support the 1500 parents, guardians and families we see across the paediatric and neonatal units at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington and Queen Charlotte’s Hospital, Hammersmith.

What is Nutri-Care?

We will be providing a variety of nutritious food options such as cereals, soup, dried and tinned fruits, rice cakes, teas, coffee and other light snacks, so we are able to focus on the health and well-being of the parent. This ensures their needs are being met and facilitates that all-important respite needed whilst their child is being cared for.

In-Hospital food can be limited, expensive and far away from the units; by providing accessible food alternatives, we are reducing the parents need to leave their baby or child for long periods of time and help keep their costs down.

Having an unwell baby or child can be very stressful and it can sometimes be hard for parents to want to eat. However eating well and regularly will keep parents strong and give them stamina, especially for new mothers to establish breastfeeding or expressing and to maintain their breastmilk supply.

Providing refreshments improves the health and well-being of parents, guardians and families, who are already in a difficult situation.

How to get involved?

To enable us to continue providing Nutri-Care for our parents, guardians and families, we rely on your donations! To donate to our JustGiving campaign page, please click the button below.

Alternatively, to find out more or how to arrange a food collection in your office or community, please get in touch on info@cosmiccharity.org.uk.

The need

Having a premature baby or child admitted to intensive care can be very traumatic and families may need specialist help, support and counselling.

What is COSMIC doing?

COSMIC is there to support families through this difficult time. We help by funding materials that our dedicated Family Liaison Team on PICU. This can include:

• Information booklets and welcome packs for parents newly admitted anxious families
• Specialist bereavement and counselling materials for families – such as sibling bereavement books and memory boxes.

Our Neonatal team use a range of medical and nursing interventions to decrease the stress of preterm neonates in neonatal intensive care units and aims to maximise brain development and reduce long-term cognitive and behavioural problems, called developmental Care. COSMICs Family Support Fund funds a variety of equipment to help our team carry our developmental care, including;

• We provide a set of mini-boos, mummy keeps one mini-boo on her to pick up her scent and then places it next to baby in the incubator, baby can smell mummy and you keep swapping the 2 mini-boos so mummy can smell baby too, which in turn, if breast feeding, will help the milk flow. Having a child a very sick child in an incubator is often very difficult for parents, not being able to touch or hold their tiny baby.
• Octopuses are one of the tools that we use to help soothe babies on the NICU. The octopus’s tentacles feel like their mother’s umbilical cord, which stops them from pulling at medical lines and potentially causing serious problems.
• Premature babies, often miss out on some of the nesting period within the womb, but with the help of equipment such as a Baby Nest, we can stimulate this nesting aiding in the babies care and development.
• The Zaky hand was specifically designed to carry the scent of parents, allowing the baby and parent to bond, when they are not together. The Zaky hand has been proven to reduce adverse physiologic and developmental behaviours of premature infants in a neonatal unit.