In March 2013 we lost our dearly loved son Luke Oliver, due to the rare chromosome disorder trisomy 13.  This was an incredibly devastating time but we wanted to create Luke's Legacy and do something positive to help others, whilst remembering our little boy. Since, we have established the charity Friends of Serenity to support East Lancashire Women and Newborn Centre in providing services which the nhs are unable to fund.  

We provide memory boxes and miscarriage keepsakes to the hospital and have designed, created a 2nd bereavement room called "The Butterfly Suite" and provided new furniture for "The Serenity Suite". 

Alongside our work for East Lancashire we raise awareness of Trisomy 13 through qualified information via social media, leaflets and speaking at bereavement study days.

We now have a new challenge...a huge challenge...and we need your help!

For many years East Lancashire hospital trust have been focused on trying to prevent stillbirths. We are aware that one of the preventable causes of stillbirth is babies that have not grown appropriately, intrauterine growth retardation or IUGR.  Women who are at risk are referred for a scan.

 However, there is shortage both locally and nationally of sonographers to perform these growth scans and sometime women wait longer than they should for a scan or are induced at term because of a measurement rather than a scan.

 Part of the solution to training people in ultrasound is to use a scan trainer and this has been proven in other fields. The Medaphor Scan trainer is a simulation tool for ultrasound so that people can learn the basic skills before live scanning on patients. If we managed to acquire this equipment, the trust could start training another midwife plus consultants so that growth scans could be provided on the same day. Babies that weren’t growing would be picked up at an earlier stage in pregnancy and closely monitored preventing stillbirth. It would also allow anomalies to be picked up  much quicker  and other problems in pregnancy. 

The cost of this equipment is around £84,000.  Unfortunately there is no funding for this equipment. The NHS is under-resourced and we really need this equipment in East Lancashire now to prevent stillbirth and to help detect further problems in pregnancies.  

I (Jo) was very lucky to be part of a training session on this wonderful piece of equipment in July and got to practice completing a simulated 12 week scan. Now we know this is going to be a massive challenge but we think we have such fabulous support we can raise the £84,000. This is such an important piece of equipment and there isn't one available in the whole of the North of Lancashire. This would mean other hospitals may also be able to use the equipment to train their professionals.  

We already have in excess of 12k+ but we still have other small projects which we need to continue with. 

Please please support and donate to such a vital and worthy cause.

If you would like to help fundraise please get in touch.

My email is jo@friendsofserenity.org

Thank you!

Jo- Founder of FoS  x

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