About Us

A Message From Our Founder

Why Little Angels Exists

When I first walked onto a children's ward, I was not prepared for what I would find. I had heard the statistics, read the reports and spoken to doctors and nurses who gave their everything each day. But nothing readies you for the sight of a small child, pale and frightened, sitting alone on a bed that is too big for them, waiting for a parent who has had to step outside to compose themselves. That image has never left me. It is the reason Little Angels Research Fund exists.

Little Angels was built on a straightforward belief: no child should face hospital alone, and no family should navigate the worst days of their lives without support. The NHS does extraordinary things, but it cannot do everything. It cannot provide the comfort packs, sensory equipment and soft toys that transform a hospital room into somewhere a child can still feel like a child. That is where we come in.

"Every child deserves kindness. Every family deserves support. Every ward deserves what Little Angels can bring."

— Founder, Little Angels Research Fund

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Our Vision

Every Child Deserves a Smile

There is a particular kind of courage that belongs only to children. It is the courage of a small person who does not fully understand what is happening to them, who is in a place that smells strange and sounds frightening, and who is trying very hard to be brave because they can see that the grown-ups around them are scared too.

Little Angels was created with one central conviction at its heart: that every child, regardless of what has brought them to hospital, deserves to feel like a child. That the clinical necessity of treatment does not have to erase the warmth, the play and the joy that children need as much as medicine. We want every children's ward in the United Kingdom to have access to the toys, games, sensory equipment and comfort resources that make a real difference.

We work alongside the NHS, not in competition with it, supporting the doctors, nurses and play specialists who do extraordinary work every single day. Together, with the generosity of everyone who supports Little Angels, we can make that vision real.

The Evidence

Why Smiles Matter

It would be easy to dismiss the idea of smiles as a sentimental one. It is not. Emotional wellbeing is not separate from physical health. It is part of it. Children who are emotionally supported through their hospital experience recover more quickly, experience less post-traumatic stress, and are more cooperative with their care. These are not soft outcomes. They are measurable, clinically significant results.

Play is the primary way in which children make sense of their world. Distraction is a specific tool with a robust evidence base: when the brain is engaged with something absorbing, the processing of pain signals is genuinely reduced. Children who are traumatised by their hospital experience may develop lasting anxieties about healthcare into adulthood. Children who have been supported well tend to develop a healthier, more trusting relationship with healthcare for life. That is why smiles matter: not as decoration on top of healthcare, but as a fundamental part of what good care looks like.

Faster Recovery

Emotionally supported children recover more quickly and are more cooperative with their care.

Less Trauma

Children supported well in hospital experience less post-traumatic stress and fewer lasting anxieties.

Power of Play

Distraction genuinely reduces pain signal processing. Play gives children a language for feelings they don't yet have words for.

Looking Ahead

Our Vision for the Future

In the near term, we want to deepen our partnerships with the hospitals we already work with, and extend our reach to wards that currently have no relationship with us, so that no child's access to comfort and play resources depends on which hospital they happen to be in. We want to grow our community of regular givers, because the predictability that regular income provides is transformative for a charity, and we want to develop our business partnerships into something more systematic and impactful.

Looking further ahead, our vision is for a United Kingdom in which every child in hospital has access to the emotional and practical support they need as a matter of course, regardless of where they are or their family's financial circumstances. We want Little Angels to be a recognised contributor to the evidence base on children's wellbeing in healthcare settings, and to exist for the long term, still responding to whatever form the need takes in fifty years' time. None of this is inevitable. It depends on the decisions that people and organisations make about whether and how to support us.

"We believe enough people will decide that children in hospital are worth their sustained attention. The future of Little Angels is being written right now, by every person who reads these pages and decides to act."