A charity which donates children’s pyjamas to hospitals won Best Charity in the Croydon Business Excellence Awards announced last week.

CEO of Children’s Hospital Pyjamas, Charmaine Green told Eastlondonlines: “Winning that award shows us that there are people that actually think what we do is amazing.” The charity hopes the award will help reverse a drop in donations caused by the financial situation.

She added: “We’re still in shock. 13 years I’ve been running these appeals for, and we’ve never won an award before.”

The charity based in Croydon donates brand new pairs of pyjamas to children in hospitals, hospices and women’s refuges across the UK.

Green said that winning the award has “boosted team morale because we all feel a bit gutted at the minute because we’re not sure how we’re going to get through this year at this moment in time with donations alone.”

Children’s Hospital Pyjamas have noticed the impact of the cost-of-living crisis with a recent drop in donations.

The charity’s collections centre around the Christmas period. Usually by November the donations start flooding in, but she said that this year “they’ve seen the difference.”

Green added: “We don’t have the money to make up all the shortfalls that we’ve got this year. So I haven’t quite worked out what we’re going to do, but I’m literally winging it and hoping.”

Children’s Hospital Pyjamas began to take shape 13 years ago, when Green’s then two-year-old daughter was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow.

Her daughter developed a temperature on her third birthday party. She had to leave her friends and family behind and be rushed to hospital, where she was found to have pneumonia.

Green said: “You can imagine a three-year-old that’s just had to leave all her friends and family behind…she really cried her eyes out, she was non-compliant, she wouldn’t put the face mask on to get the oxygen.”

A nurse brought Green’s daughter a Fifi and the Flowertots scooter and told her that she could scooter around the room for five minutes if she agreed to put the oxygen mask on.

When Green found out that the scooter had been donated by another family with a child who was an inpatient at the hospital, she decided to collect some toys for her local hospital that Christmas.

She said: “I just thought it was a one off really. And then the following year, as it got towards my daughter’s birthday, friends were saying oh, so when are you starting the toy collection again, and I was like, alright, so it’s a thing now. I kind of got roped into it that way, but actually it grew it grew it grew.”

Green then decided that she needed to help the hospital by donating something more practical.

She said it can bring huge comfort to a child to have pyjamas to wear in hospital: “We’ve heard stories of children that have come in through social services … With literally the clothes on their back … Children [who have] had their clothes cut off in road traffic accidents [have] been given our donations.”

She added that they had been contacted by a nurse in Croydon who said “there’d been a lot of deaths, and it broke his heart to dress children in adult hospital gowns. Was there anything we could do?”

Green said that for bereaved parents “it is horrendous but it’s going to make it worse seeing your child dressed in a hospital gown … If they’re wearing a comfortable pair of pyjamas, I think it gives a little bit … Of happiness to a family … It still blows my mind where these donations end up.”

To donate to Children’s Hospital Pyjamas, visit the website’s donation page. Anyone can send them an item from their Amazon wish-list or make a financial contribution. The full list of Croydon business awards are here