Generally, it is not too difficult to raise funds for children, especially ill children. Add the magic words Great Ormond Street Hospital, and it should be a pushover. Nevertheless, if it is something as apparently mundane as providing accommodation, some ingenuity is needed.

Hence the Big Bedroom Appeal – to provide new bedrooms for children with life-threatening brain tumours. The aim is for the new rooms to be more like a child’s bedroom at home: “the more comfortable a child feels, the faster they recover”.

The appeal literature points out that, currently, often there is no room for both parents to sit by the bed, and doctors and nurses struggle to squeeze in all the equipment (much of which may not have existed when the place was built).

To demonstrate what is involved, a grid showing the floor space for an existing cubicle is provided – with stickers showing the space taken by bed, bin, table, fluid pump, monitor, wheelchair, equipment storage – before one thinks of a single chair, space for toys, etc. The trick is to squeeze all the stickers for the items into the available space. It’s then all too clear why more space is needed.

It is the old cry of the more involved a potential donor becomes, the more likely it is that they will be generous. And it’s not just an ask for money. Also in the pack is a message form – so that a donor can write a message which will be hung in the ward, for all to see, and be cheered.

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