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“Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) at Temple Street has stayed open during the whole Covid crisis, we never closed our doors. Children with serious illnesses and complex medical needs continue to come to the hospital for treatment. Some children, including those with brain injuries, need to stay with us for a while to benefit from rehabilitation before they can go home. Some of the effects of Covid on Temple Street only became apparent when the time came for our patients to go home. We rely on excellent community disability teams to continue to look after the children after their time in hospital. Unfortunately, a lot of those services were closed as therapists were redeployed to do contact tracing or swabbing; some have still not fully reopened. This means that much-needed support is no longer as available. Because of this, children have to spend more time in hospital before they can go home safely- and no matter how special Temple Street is this is very challenging for children and families. It also means that the team have to work much harder to get children home, which has been a challenge on top of everything else, but everyone has found ways to make it work out of a desire to do the right thing for the children and their families. I am excited to watch our team here growing. My colleagues are wonderful, I only wish I had three of each of them! We need more therapists, nurses, doctors and on the top of all that, we need more space. Temple Street is a very old building; we are constantly adding extra bits to it, just to function properly. We really need the public to help us out this year, more than ever, to be able to provide the best care possible for our wonderful young patients at a difficult time.”
Dr Irwin Gill is a Consultant Paediatrician working in Neurodisability and Rehabilitation in Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) at Temple Street. Children’s Health Foundation is asking you to get involved and wear a Christmas Jumper for Ireland’s sickest children.
To get involved in this year’s Christmas Jumper Day campaign, Children’s Health Foundation are asking you and your colleagues to wear a Christmas Jumper on Dec 11th and raise much-needed funds for sick children in CHI at Temple Street and Crumlin. Find out how you can get your company involved by heading to www.childrenshealth.ie/christmasjumperday
Children’s Health Foundation is the new unified children’s healthcare charity, which exists to raise funds to support the vital, life-saving work that takes place every minute of every day in Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) hospitals and urgent care centres.