Patient and family experience
Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity (GOSH Charity) provides strategic funding to support the patient and family experience at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH).
Patient and family experience strategy 2025 – 2030
Why do we need a strategy?
The mission of GOSH Charity is to transform the lives of seriously ill children.
In order to achieve this mission, we must invest in every part of our patients and families’ care, including their holistic and wellbeing needs.
This strategy articulates our funding objectives for the next five years of patient and family experience at GOSH.
We will focus on four priorities, expanding upon on our existing funding, to give seriously ill children the best childhood possible.
The full strategy will be published in Spring 2025.
How we got here?
Over 200 patients and families survey responses
Over 100 GOSH staff survey responses
Workshops with children and young people of GOSH
Interviews with Patient Experience service heads at GOSH
Landscape review of national and international trusts and health charities
Our strategic framework
| Objectives |
|---|
| Provide 'home away from home' for patients and families |
| Provide fun and relief for patients and families |
| Help families to cope |
| Treat every patient as a whole person |
| Enablers | Values |
|---|---|
| Research and innovation | Equity |
| People | Inclusivity |
| Partnerships | People and family involvemnet |
Our objectives: a breakdown
1: Provide a “home away from home” for patients and families.
We already:
- Help GOSH families to stay close to their child, by funding £1.5m a year of free family accommodation.
- Enhance patient and family care by funding the GOSH Volunteer team.
- Increase the amount of respite areas, working zones and kitchen facilities for families, by funding redevelopment projects.
We will:
- Scope the development and usability of non-clinical spaces for families across the hospital and ensure these are comfortable and homely.
- Support projects that improve access to outdoor space at GOSH, including for vulnerable patients and their families.
- Improve the food for families at GOSH, providing more healthy, affordable and bespoke options as well as improving accessibility of food.
- Fund initiatives that allow families to stay together and minimise the disruption on their lives.
2: Provide fun and relief for patients and families
We already:
- Provide opportunities for children to be playful, build coping mechanisms and reduce anxiety, by funding a team of ~50 Play Specialists and Play Workers.
- Provide play support for families outside of normal working hours so that they are not isolated on the evenings and weekends, by funding the “Out of Hours Programme”.
- Provide therapeutic support to help children to achieve their development goals whilst at hospital, through funding the Music Therapy service.
- Provide popular gaming equipment to the wards of the hospital, by funding 120 Xbox and Nintendo Switch devices
We will:
- Identify and support more opportunities for fun and entertainment throughout the hospital, alleviating boredom on wards and in waiting rooms.
- Improve access to play and create more playful spaces at GOSH.
- Improve access to music therapy by increasing the service to meet demand.
3: Help families to cope
We already:
- Provide long and short-term holistic support to patient and families at GOSH, by funding the multi-faith chaplaincy service.
- Provide GOSH families with free welfare advice, by funding the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) service.
- Protect children at GOSH and support the wellbeing of their families by funding ~40% of the Social Work team.
- Fund food vouchers for low-income families and breastfeeding mothers, to allow them to purchase meals from the hospital canteen.
- Fund travel reimbursement for families who have had their appointment cancelled.
We will:
- Scope opportunities to support the mental wellbeing of parents and carers whilst their child is in hospital.
- Provide more opportunities for families to connect with others going through a similar situation to their own.
- Scope opportunities to alleviate the financial pressure of being in hospital as much as possible, to relieve additional stress on families.
4: Treat every patient as a whole person
We already:
- Deliver art and creativity to families, by funding posts and resources in the GOSH arts team.
- Provide opportunities for transplant patients to compete in the British Transplant Games, by funding accommodation and travel fees.
- Provide patients with mentoring by professional athletes by funding a partnership award with Dame Kelly Holmes Trust.
We will:
- Support the individual development of GOSH patients by providing opportunities to express themselves and develop their social skills, stay in contact with friends and develop confidence in making new ones.
- Provide support for all ages; ensuring that teenagers and young people are catered to; that they have space within the hospital to socialise, develop and connect with the outside world.
- Provide patients with opportunities to engage in their hobbies and learn new ones, to be artistic and creative.
How will we achieve our ambitions?
Service delivery funding
We fund ~£5m annually to provide services at Great Ormond Street Hospital that aim to improve the experience of patients and families, including the Play, Chaplaincy and Music Therapy teams. As part of this strategy, we have scoped each of these services and undertaken a landscape review of similar services at other trusts. For the first three years of the Strategy, we will focus on improving the provision for services that are over and above core NHS provision, as well as improving the ability for the services to be strategic and ambitious by moving into a longer-term funding model, funding 3 years of services at a time rather than 1.
Our new Everyday Impact Fund
We are launching a new funding opportunity called the ‘Everyday Impact Fund’, with an aim of funding small projects, to the value of about £5k, that can make a big difference to the experiences of patients and their families at GOSH. This opportunity will be open to all GOSH Staff across all departments and areas of the hospital and at all levels, ensuring that the call is inclusive and covers all aspects of a family’s experience. We recognise that frontline staff have a unique understanding of the day-to-day challenges for families at GOSH, and we are keen to support turning their ideas into action for the benefit of patients and their families.
Patient and Family Experience Panel
In order to ensure we are funding the most impactful projects; we have recruited a “Patient and Family Experience Panel” to help us with funding decisions and strategic steer. This panel is made up of people with lived experience: ex-patients and family members or carers with experience of NHS paediatric healthcare, as well as health professionals. To ensure the panel is diverse and inclusive we are offering an optional payment to the lived experience experts in recognition of their expertise and as a token of appreciation for their contribution and time. This panel will make funding decisions, as well as shape future services and initiatives to improve patient and family experience.
Special purpose funds
GOSH Charity has several special purpose funds (SPFs) which are a group of funds where each fund has a restricted purpose, dictated by the initial donation of funds. Funds can be used by GOSH staff on an ad-hoc basis to fund a variety of activities within the restricted purpose and aligned with the Charitable Expenditure policy. Funding must be approved by the relevant fundholders who are designated senior hospital staff members responsible for the oversight of a fund within the principles outlined in the SPF Policy.
GOSH Staff seeking funding from a specific special purpose fund or seeking to explore the various funds available should contact GOSH finance, through Aaron Shah (Aaron.Shah@gosh.nhs.uk).
The charity is not currently opening new special purpose funds.