Joint statement from the Children’s Cancer Foundation and My Room on redundancies at the Royal Children’s Hospital’s Children’s Cancer Centre

Statement from the Chairs of My Room Children’s Cancer Charity Limited, Maurizio Marcocci, and Children’s Cancer Foundation, the Hon. Jaala Pulford:

We are distressed by reports that ten full time equivalent roles from the Children’s Cancer Centre at the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) are to be made redundant.

As organisations founded by parents of children with cancer, we understand the critical importance of the thirteen staff involved and for years we have helped to fund some of these roles.

It has been a requirement that donations from our organisations to RCH must be paid to the Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation, which then gives the funds to the hospital.

The RCH change impact statement is quoted as saying that changes to philanthropic allocations are behind the need to cut jobs currently being supported by donor funds.

We know it has been assumed by some that our organisations have initiated changes to our funding of roles at the Children’s Cancer Centre, and that this is the reason for these redundancies.

This is not true. We have not withdrawn support. Our commitment remains firm.

To demonstrate this, as recently as 5 March of this year, we reaffirmed our commitment and expressed a strong desire to fund further positions.

We remain committed to working with the RCH to fund these critical positions at the Children’s Cancer Centre – roles we know, firsthand, make an immeasurable difference to the children and families our organisations support.

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