About Us

How Momentum Started 

In 2004, Bianca Effemey was working in the Paediatric Department at Kingston Hospital.  She saw that when families had a child diagnosed with cancer, there was definitely a need for them to be able to contact other local families in the same situation.  This is how Momentum started.  Bianca contacted Jacqui Coppellotti and Alison Trigg, whose children had both been affected by cancer and they helped her to create the charity.

The projects which Momentum commits to, improve the hospital environment for very sick children who spend long periods of time there, or who have to make a large number of outpatient trips. Studies have shown that sick children definitely respond in a positive way to creative and attractive surroundings and that this can even help them to recover more quickly.  At Kingston Hospital, our fundraising to date has paid for a beautiful mosaic mural at the entrance to the Paediatric department, a Children’s garden with a special oncology area, a room for teenagers and a room for parents, as well as flat-screen televisions and access for patients and their parents to laptops and other special equipment.

We understand 

When your child is diagnosed with cancer, as a parent you feel utterly helpless and isolated.  You and your family are plunged into a state of complete anxiety and fear, and the lives of everyone within your family are turned upside down.

Your child will typically have to have regular hospital treatment. This may include scans, biopsies, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.  Treatment can last for many months or even years.

Long stays at hospital are common whilst undergoing treatment, or as a result of infections developed due to a compromised immune system.  Your child's ability to socialise or attend school may also be affected.

We hope that through Momentum some support may be given to those who may feel alone and lost during treatment, or would just like to talk to other parents about what's happening around them. 

Getting Through

We stride the clinical maze hand in hand.
Others outside try to smile and understand.

Unfortunately to know you need to bear,
Your own Child's suffering and despair.

What we would do to swap our face,
And put ourselves in their fragile place.

Our lives we would give to ensure,
They live happily now and forever more.

The cause we will probably never find,
And would it give us peace of mind?

Thank goodness for most there is a cure,
But the treatment is so hard to endure.