King Edward Memorial Hospital, WA

King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women (KEMH) is a hospital located in Subiaco, Western Australia. It is Western Australia’s largest maternity hospital and only referral centre for complex pregnancies.

It provides pregnancy and neonatal care within the greater Perth Metropolitan area. In cases where patients have gone to private maternity clinics, they may be moved to KEMH if complications occur. Cases of complicated pregnancy in regional Western Australia are usually transferred to KEMH by the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at King Edward Memorial Hospital (KEMH) cares for more than 2800 babies annually and is the largest NICU in the Southern Hemisphere with 100 beds for predominantly inborn preterm or sick babies. With almost 10 percent of WA babies born prematurely each year, the NICU provides vital, lifesaving care to those that need it the most.

LLTF has always prioritized its relationships with key tertiary hospitals working closely with a variety of departments within the hospital to ensure families who have had a premature or sick baby have easy access to valuable supports and resources during their NICU/SCN journey.

With our long-standing relationship between King Edward Memorial Hospital’s social work department and the Lifes Little Treasures Foundation and having worked closely for the last 6+ years, it was such a pleasure to finally meet key health professionals/social workers in person at our Perth Walk for Prems event and a visit to KEMH and a tour of the nursery.

We look forward in continuing to strengthen our relationship with KEMH by fostering those and new relationships with key staff, expanding our services within the hospital and by continuing to provide our resources and helping support families who have had a premature or sick baby who need that extra support.

LLTF resources provided to KEMH are as follows –

• Little Bag of Calm

• Family Assistance program Keeping Families Together Pack

• A Guiding Hand for Families in NICU/SCN

• A Guiding Hand for Families in Special Care Nurseries

• Sibling colouring book My Colourful Journey

• Sibling bereavement colouring book My Brave Journey

• 100 day quilt packs

• Milestone Gift giving program

• Little Readers Read-a-thon

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Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, QLD

LLTF has always prioritized the opportunity to provide peer support through NICU Connections to families currently in the neonatal units. It’s a partnership between hospital, staff, families and LLTF.

“LLTF provides an important peer support for our families. The value of being able to talk to someone who understands what they are going through and can completely identify with their experience, is immeasurable. The Brekkie Bar and NICU Connections morning teas are great additions to the support network for our families and without them, there would be a gap in the “care” for the families who have babies in our unit. Mel is warm, engaging and committed to the families she speaks to and cares for and we are grateful to be in partnership with LLTF.” Clinical Nurse Consultant Kate Coghill of the Grantley Stable Neonatal Unit, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital (RBWH)

At RBWH the LLTF team also work closely with the Social Work department to ensure families in need are accessing supports like our Financial Assistance Packages, Little Bag of Calm and our Going Home packs.

Below is a summary of how LLTF works with RBWH to deliver informative resources, care packages, practical support and connection opportunities.

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Royal Women’s Hospital, VIC

Life’s Little Treasures Foundation (LLTF) has had a long relationship with the team at Royal Women’s Hospital (RWH) in Melbourne.

In fact, RWH was the first hospital that LLTF began working with to support mothers.

Today LLTF team members, Maggie and Katie, run NICU Connections events for parents at the hospital every fortnight. At these sessions families get to connect with other families and with our staff who have the lived experience of having a prem or sick baby.

When producing new services for parents the LLTF team always engage with health professionals at RWH to get advice and feedback. As well as talking to parents about new services it is important to hear what our leading health professionals believe will work with families. Together we make sure what we deliver is just what families need.

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