University partnership with Children’s Hospice gets underway

A three-year partnership between the award-winning business school at the University of Huddersfield and Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice has begun.

The prestigious Knowledge Exchange Partnership (KTP) is supported by UK Research and Innovation funding body, Innovate UK, and is led by Professor Shona Bettany of the University of Huddersfield, alongside Dr Adam Dennett and Dr Fiona Cheetham. 

Opened in 2011, Forget Me Not supports children with life-shortening conditions and families living with or facing the loss of their child in West Yorkshire. Forget Me Not provides nursing care, end-of-life care, creative therapies, bereavement support and counselling, in its Huddersfield-based purpose-built hospice, in families' homes and in local hospitals. 

Mirroring challenges felt throughout the sector, the Hospice faces a complex operating context with a lack of government funding, increasing costs, a competitive funding environment, increasing demand for services, and the mission to serve the complexity of needs of children with life-shortening conditions and their families. Innovative organisational transformation is required to ensure future sustainability.

The KTP will enable Forget Me Not to draw on academic knowledge to develop, implement and embed the ‘Forget Me Not Blueprint’, a model of what the children’s hospice of the future should look like. This will inform Forget Me Not’s future strategic direction and provide a transferable innovative business model to potentially benefit other organisations in the sector.

The project manager, Summer Fox, funded through the grant award, who will be dedicated to driving the project over the next three years, said: “I am excited about this project and I’m looking forward to getting stuck into the challenge. Forget Me Not is an incredible organisation and I am grateful for the opportunity to support them on this part of their journey.”  

Gareth Pierce, CEO of Forget Me Not, said: “Like other children’s hospices across the UK, we face an incredibly challenging financial climate right now and that means we’re having to think differently about how we operate in the future. This exciting and innovative project will help guide us as we explore what that future will look like.”

Professor Bettany said: “Children’s hospices provide vital care and irreplaceable support for children with life-limiting conditions and their families. This award enables important work on knowledge-focused and evidence-led strategic innovation at Forget Me Not that can potentially impact on the children’s hospice sector as a whole.”

KTPs are government-funded programmes aimed at helping UK organisations improve performance through innovation. The programme involves a collaboration between an organisation, a university and a graduate associate, who is funded full-time for the duration of the project.

The University of Huddersfield currently has a portfolio of around 25 KTPs attracting a total of almost £6 million in funding.

To find out more about KTP awards at the University of Huddersfield please visit research.hud.ac.uk/business/knowledge or email ktp@hud.ac.uk. If you would like to know more about Forget Me Not Children's Hospice visit forgetmenotchild.co.uk.

(Main image: Gareth Pierce, CEO Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice; Professor Bob Cryan, Vice-Chancellor, University of Huddersfield; Summer Fox, KTP Associate; Professor Shona Bettany, University of Huddersfield; and Dr Adam Dennett, University of Huddersfield.)