Symposium on ‘Charity and Children’s Hospitals: Exceptionalism, Experiences, and Welfare’

Children’s wards and hospitals, and children as hospital inpatients, can be considered ‘exceptions’ both from a historical standpoint and in contemporary contexts. In Britain, amid high infant mortality rates that would persist beyond the beginning of the 1900s, the earliest dedicated children’s hospitals were slow to be established, with the earliest ones set up in the late 18^th Century. In the UK, given their origins as charitable institutions, a strong legacy of fundraising still exists in children’s hospitals:  children’s hospitals continue to receive more public attention and support than other hospital types and charitable causes, they receive and provide unique types of charitable support, and children’s hospitals often retain charitable arms independent from those of their ‘parent’ NHS organisation. In other parts of the world, and regardless of the health care system in place in different nations, children’s hospitals and wards are often sites of charitable and/or voluntary intervention compared to other health care domains. Examples include Starship, New Zealand’s national children’s hospital, and Finland’s New Children’s Hospital. We are now accepting calls for papers for this one-day symposium – see here for how to apply.