6 hours Ago By [email protected] (Liam Thorp)
It was an impossible dream made possible. This is the full story of how the city of Liverpool came together to save one of its most treasured and important institutions. In a busy newsroom, rumours of news are rife and it is our job as reporters to find out what is actually true.
On Friday, October 4 2024, a rumour made its way into the Liverpool Echo newsroom that none of us wanted to believe. The suggestion was made that Zoe's Place, an enormously loved and cherished baby hospice in the West Derby area of the city, could be about to announce its closure. It seemed unthinkable that such a vital institution, which has been caring for poorly babies and children and their families in the city since 1995 could be closing down.
Try as we might, we could not get any real answers at first. By the following Monday, it became clear that those rumours were tragically true. Staff had been called into the hospice on Yew Tree Lane to be told that their jobs would be ending in 30 days and that Zoe's Place Liverpool would be no more by the end of the year.
The Zoe's Place charity also runs baby hospices in Coventry and Middlesbrough. The charity had been fundraising to build a new development for its original Liverpool facility with its lease for the Yew Tree Lane site due to run out in 2025. A statement released on that Monday explained that the fundraising efforts had not worked and that there was now insufficient time to find a new home.
A statement from executive trustee Joan Stainsby said: "Liverpool was where Zoe’s Place originated and will always be close to our hearts. This has been an incredibly difficult decision and one that we have worked tirelessly to avoid. Unfortunately, there are simply no other options available to us.
" The ECHO first broke the news of the impending closure of Zoe's Place Liverpool at 6pm on that Monday evening and the reaction was enormous. The huge outpouring of shock and sadness around Merseyside and beyond highlighted exactly the esteem with which this organisation was held in. Liverpool West Derby MP Ian Byrne had only caught wind of the news minutes before the ECHO story went live.
"I was in the House of Commons chamber at the time and someone sent me a text saying 'have you heard about Zoe's?" he explains. "By the time I got out of the chamber I saw the ECHO article and I couldn't believe what I was reading." "I was getting so many messages all night, " he adds.
"It just came totally out of the blue and shocked everyone. It was so final as well. Staff were being put on notice, Zoe's was closing.
It took my breath away because I didn’t have a heads up or anything." For Pat Jones, the news was beyond heartbreaking . Pat is one of the thousands of people who have been supported through the darkest moments of their lives by Zoe's Place.
Her daughter Katie was born with cerebral palsy in 1997 after a traumatic birth. Zoe's Place played a crucial part in helping the family before Katie sadly died in 2005. Zoe's Place hosted Pat's wedding and Katie's funeral and the idea of losing such an important place was devastating for Pat.
"Zoe's Place is so important. They don't just look after your child, they look after you and the rest of your family," explains Pat. "I go back to Zoe's every year on Katie's birthday with cards and balloons for her, it is such a special place for me.
" "So when I read the story about it closing in the ECHO , I just broke down crying. I couldn't believe that Zoe's wouldn't be there for me and the other families anymore." News that one of its three hospices was set to close had rocked the entire Zoe's Place charity.
"Everybody was devastated," recalls Summa Gill, the charity's head of marketing. "The news just silenced the whole organisation and we just went into a sort of grieving mode. It felt like we were grieving the loss of one of our limbs.
Liverpool was the first Zoe’s place, we couldn’t get our head around losing it. It was very eerie, no one knew what to say." "I remember writing a communications message and it was almost like we had become the vulnerable case study that we normally try to support.
We were in a desperate situation with no options. Just like the families we support. And just like Zoe’s Place supports those families, we needed the local community to come and support us in our hour of need.
" While the decision to close Zoe's Place appeared final, the following days saw the feelings around Liverpool begin to change, from devastation to resolve. It quickly became clear that the city was not willing to let the hospice go without a fight. Local celebrities like comedian Adam Rowe, singer Jamie Webster and UFC fighter Paddy Pimblett were amongst the first to rally support with videos on social media.
They quickly began organising fundraising events. An impromptu comedy night at Liverpool's Blackstock Market sold out in record time, instantly raising thousands for the cause. But it still wasn't immediately clear at this stage whether there was any real prospect of the hospice being saved or whether these efforts would all ultimately be in vain.
As the local MP, Mr Byrne decided an urgent meeting with the charity's trustees was needed to see what was in fact possible. "I had tried to phone them on the Monday night but obviously they were inundated after the news broke," Mr Byrne explains. "I got through on Tuesday and set up the meeting for the Thursday.
I remember walking into the centre and one of the staff members sort of fell into my arms and said 'please, if there is anything you can do." "The meeting was not a time for recriminations about how things had got to this point," he adds. "It was about asking what we could do to stop this from happening.
I said I felt the city needed an opportunity to galvanize around this special place that is so important for the city and thankfully the board gave us a commitment to work with us on that journey." "I spoke to the trustees the morning before they met with Ian," explains Ms Gill. "As part of my job I had been keeping an eye on social media and there definitely seemed to be an element of hope bubbling up.
" The charity's marketing boss told the trustees about how Liverpool had rallied around the raise hundreds of thousands of pounds in just a few days for the Spellow Library in North Liverpool which had been damaged by an arson attack in the summer riots. "I flagged it as an example and said Liverpool is a city that stands up for each other and it might not let this happen," adds Ms Gill. "The trustees appreciated that but made the fair comment that the £5 million Zoe's Place needed was a huge amount of money.
They had to manage expectations and in their experience this amount of fundraising in the time frame had never been achieved before, at Zoe's Place, nor any other UK hospice." Having spoken with Mr Byrne following his meeting with the trustees, the ECHO officially launched its own campaign to help save Zoe's Place that weekend. We committed to covering the story every single day of the next four weeks and would bring together the hundreds of fundraising events and efforts taking place around the city and beyond with a rolling live blog that would keep everyone updated on the progress of the campaign.
It quickly felt like the whole city was involved. From children making bracelets for sale, to businesses giving up days of takings to the spectacle of hundreds of people in yellow Zoe's Place t-shirts walking from the city's Pier Head to the hospice in West Derby. You couldn't move in Liverpool during those frenzied weeks without bumping into someone who was doing something for this campaign.
The images of 10-year-old Anthony Demellweek pushing his sister in a wheelchair towards the hospice finish line after a gruelling 48-mile challenge will live long in the memory. And there were big names supporting the cause as well. A Liverpool ECHO video brought together powerful messages from the likes of Liverpool greats Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher, Everton legends Peter Reid and Michael Ball and celebrities like Claire Sweeney and even the Queen of Scotty Road.
This all helped the donations to keep flooding in, including a remarkable £100,000 from local Liverpool clothing company Montirex. "What we saw was absolutely unprecedented," recounts Mr Byrne. "We had to build the narrative that there was a new Zoe’s on the horizon that people could be a part of and that they were putting money into something that had a future.
I think we did that and lots of people played an important role in that including the Liverpool ECHO. Once you get that momentum in any campaign it can be quite unstoppable. The staff and the families played such a huge part in that as well.
" As Mr Byrne says, whilst the endorsements of big names was great for the campaign, there were no more powerful advocates for the importance of Zoe's Place than those who had relied on its crucial services. One of those was Pat Jones, who felt she should share her story in the hope of explaining to people why the hospice must be saved. "After I spoke to the ECHO I didn't realise it was going to be in the paper the next day," she remembers with a laugh.
"My daughter-in-law called me and told me I should go and buy the paper because I was on the front page. I went into the shop with my hood up so I wouldn't get recognised." The charity itself was going on a major learning curve, explains Ms Gill.
"Sometimes the charity hasn’t felt comfortable asking families to go on tv or in the media and that’s understandable but this campaign turned all that on its head, because the families were vital," she adds. "The sector can be a little risk averse when it comes to publicity, because things can go wrong on camera, and the dignity of families and children always comes first. But in Liverpool the families were so willing to put their stories out there and they wanted to demonstrate how much support they received.
We knew that was what was going to save us." As the campaign moved into its third week, with the deadline hovering on the horizon, the fundraising target of £5m was still lightyears away despite the incredible efforts across the city. It was clear that a miracle was needed and later that week one arrived via a Liverpool business that swept in to save the day.
On October 28, the ECHO broke the news that TJ Morris Ltd, the Liverpool-based owners of the Home Bargains shopping empire, had donated an enormous £2.5m to the campaign , covering half of the overall total and putting the city in touching distance of its goal. It was a remarkable moment that sparked relief and joy across Liverpool.
"That was the moment we knew we would get this over the line," adds Mr Byrne. "Its hard to put into words how that galvanized everything. It is so lovely to have people who have done very well for themselves but clearly haven't forgotten where they came from.
" "It was amazing," adds Ms Gill. "The campaign jumped from having achieved 30% of the target to nearly 80% overnight. We had raised quite a bit but that £2.
5m meant we had one million to go. Things had slowed down a little and that just lifted everyone and became a catalyst. It gave us a story to tell, we could tell people we had the last million to go.
" Ms Jones said she burst into tears when she heard the news, adding: "That was just the best news. Without that donation none of this could have happened. There are millionaires everywhere but not all of them do that.
" Even though there was still a million pounds to be raised, there was no one involved in the campaign who did not now believe that Zoe's Place would be saved . The final week saw more donations flooding in before a hectic morning of television news appearances on Friday, November 8 officially saw the £5 million target passed. Ms Gill recounts a chaotic run of events before the good news was finally announced to staff, families and the press who had gathered outside the West Derby hospice.
"I will never forget that day, I was just running on adrenaline," she recalls. "I had left my house at 4am that morning to get to the hospice in time for Good Morning Britain to be reporting live. I was just running on adrenaline all day.
" It had been decided that midday would be the moment that the news of Zoe's Place being saved would be announced. Journalists began to arrive at the hospice as staff were taken into a side room to be told the good news. "The staff were given the message and had a few minutes to absorb it all," adds Ms Gill.
"Then you saw them coming out just completely overwhelmed, hugging and crying. It was just an incredible day. I still can't get my head around what we achieved.
" "It was such a lovely moment," says Mr Byrne. "One of the fundraisers gave this amazing, the fundraising manager Matt Meaney gave this amazing, Churchillian style speech and it had us all in tears. It was so emotional.
Then I was told I had to go out and speak to the press. I had nothing prepared and was an emotional wreck but I just spoke from the heart. "It's amazing when you think about the whole journey we went on," adds the MP.
"From when I first got that phone call and the ECHO broke that story, that one of the major institutions in our city, in my constituency, was going to where we got to. From staff and families crying on the floor to crying tears of joy a month later. It is easily one of the best things I’ve ever been involved in.
For Pat Jones, the tears of distress she had felt just a month earlier at the prospect of losing such an important place had turned into an outpouring of joy and relief. "I was watching all the staff hugging and crying and I was crying too. The whole month had been such an emotional roller coaster but now we had done it, we had saved Zoe's Place.
I really think only Liverpool could have done this." With the hospice saved , now attention turns to what happens next. Agreements have been made to create a separate charity for the Liverpool arm of Zoe's Place with a new team of trustees and work to hopefully soon begin on creating the new home that this most precious institution deserves.
"We had to raise the money but we also had to look at the structure going forward," explains Mr Byrne, who has spearheaded the new set up. "We felt we needed something Liverpool-focussed and we have been having multiple meetings every week, bringing together what will be a fantastic board of trustees with so much clinical experience and that has come together, we’ve got charity status now and we are in negotiations to buy the land and get building. "Its been unbelievable with so many people working on this and volunteering their time.
Its been such a collective effort and I am super confident about the future of the new Zoe’s Place in Liverpool. It is a big year ahead." For Pat Jones, the fact that Zoe's Place will remain as a place for her to go and remember her beloved daughter Katie is the most precious gift of all.
"I don't care where they build it now, even if its on the moon," she says. "As long as it is Zoe's Place, that's all that matters to me.".
