Charity helped bring dying girl home

A CORK couple who got the chance to spend the last few precious days with their terminally ill daughter at home played a leading role in raising €15,000 for the charity who made it possible.

Billy and Ellen Sheahan, owners of the Wallis Arms Hotel in Millstreet, Co Cork, got together with the Aubane Social Club and a number of local businesses to raise the money for the Jack and Jill Foundation.

The couple’s only child, Isabelle Maggie, was just 19 weeks old when she died in October 2007.

She had spent five weeks in Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Dublin before the Jack and Jill Foundation made it possible for her to go home.

“They gave us top-class professional nursing support and counselling at home. This allowed us to enjoy the company of our daughter in our own home until she left us,” said Billy.

Billy said they wanted to acknowledge the support of the foundation by raising funds to buy more nursing home care for terminally ill children and children with severe neurological delay (brain damage).

There are 36 babies in Cork whose families are supported by the foundation and up to 300 throughout Ireland.

The €15,000 will be presented to the founder of the Jack and Jill Foundation, Jonathan Irwin, tonight in the Wallis Arms Hotel.

He founded the charity in 1997 with his wife Mary Ann O’Brien because there were no services available to them when they took their son, Jack, out of hospital and cared for him at home.

Jack was left blind, deaf and brain damaged after a seizure. He lived for 22 months, 18 of which were spent being cared for in his own surroundings by a dedicated band of five women from his neighbourhood.

“This taught both of us so much that we resolved that no other families in Ireland would ever walk through this dark, sad and traumatic valley on their own,” said Mr Irwin.

Mr Irwin pointed out that 250 old mobile phones can buy home nursing care for a sick child for a month.

www.jackandjill.ie.