Over 100 of us had a wonderful afternoon at our Pizza with Elves party just before Christmas.
It is a fabulous time to make new friends and catch up with old ones too. We had a mountain of presents courtesy of the Disney Store Manchester and the Hilton.
A big thank you to the staff at The Hilton Airport for dressing up as Elves and treating us so well.
Ilex is a young girl from Georgia, America who has a heart condition.
Whilst she was visiting her grandmother on the Wirral she asked if she could raise money for a local charity for children with heart conditions. Her grandma found us and was delighted we were so close.
Ilex and the Mockbeggar Morris Dancers raised a wonderful £40 for us. A huge thank you to them all.
Many years ago it was rare for heart children to reach adulthood. Now we are delighted that most of our children will have a normal life expectancy. The Children’s Heart Association has chosen to expand to support adults who have grown with their heart condition.
We support the cardiac forum for adults in the North West, providing funds for meetings and social events. On the adult heart unit there isn’t WiFi so we have provided MiFi devices so our young people can stay connected to their friends in the outside world. CHD Adults and their families are welcome to join in with our events, and their experience is vital to those with young children who are just starting their journey with a heart condition.
CHA have been invited to join the team designing the new surgical service at Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital in Liverpool. We are listening to what is important to those who will use the service to make sure the new centre is world class.
A huge thank you to those who raised funds for CHA at the Newark and Newbury Retro Festivals in summer of 2017. Just look what arrived this week!
These new CoaguChek machines enable blood tests to be done at home instead of a family having to miss work and school for a blood test at hospital. They are really clever and can connect to a computer for transmitting the results directly to the hospital for dosing. They will be heading to Alder Hey and Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital in the next couple of weeks
Andy handed over the cheque at our annual Ball of Hearts in November. Doesn’t he scrub up well !?!
We would like to thank NWTAC theatre company for welcoming us at their Babes in the Wood panto in Oldham. They have some very talented youngsters in their group.
We were made to feel very special as we met the cast afterwards. And thank you to Mark Barley and AB&S Wholesale for their wonderful donation to CHA
Thank you to everyone who made our Halloween party such a fun evening. The costumes were amazing. We had 2 new families there and it was great for them to start to get to know us all.
Our events are there to help families make friends with other heart families for support. If you would like to join in with our forthcoming events please click on the “Join us” link at the top of the page so we can send you the information for our subsidised (and sometimes free) trips and parties.
The lighting effects at RMCH needed a bit of a spruce up. The cardiac staff asked if we could provide something to help with distraction therapy. The projector that was in the room just wasn’t positioned so a good image could be seen so with a bit of reflector wizardry the image can now be positioned anywhere.
They had also asked for a star projector – it has moving green stars and a moving blue nebula cloud behind it. This can be moved to other rooms if required too.
Finally we have bought a wonderful twinkly glove. It has been admired by everyone who has seen it.
Many thanks to Betty, a hospital volunteer at Trafford General, and her fund raising friends “Betty’s Babes”, who heard what the staff had asked for and gave CHA the money to pay for the items.
Oh and in this bottom pic you can see the BP, O2 and ECG machine we bought earlier this year.
A wonderful time was had by all at our recent weekend away at Flamingo Land 
31 families met together to rekindle old friendships and to make new ones.
We found out who likes the adrenaline rides,
and who preferred to watch the animal shows.
We learned who makes the best BBQ food.
But most of all we learned that heart families know how to have the best fun ever – and yes we did ignore the signs on every single ride that said you couldn’t ride on this if you had a heart condition.
We figured out that our cardiac teams’ permission was better than a theme park insurance company’s disclaimer!
Thank you so much to the staff of Manchester Museum. They put together an amazing Night at the Museum … the first time they have done this type of event for families.
We went on a hunt for fossil evidence, we checked out how fast dinosaurs were running, we photographed magical, musical, and mysterious items on a treasure hunt
We designed our own T shirts and screen printed them
There was a midnight screening of “Night at the Museum 2” of course
And in the morning we met a Royal Python, a Madagascan Chameleon and two Costa Rican leaf frogs.
A big thank you to Helaina for raising £176 for CHA at our Ball of Hearts.
She has spent a year making bracelets to sell. They were beautifully colourful.