February 2026 Newsletter

Hello everyone and happy new year!

I hope you all had a lovely festive period, enjoying time with your family and friends and have had a good start to 2026. This is Caroline here, Evie’s auntie, just wanting to take a final look back on 2025, particularly thinking about the amazing people you helped us to support last year, and also share a few of our plans for 2026. 

I work for the NHS and am the trustee who connects the Foundation with the incredible people working in children’s services across the country (our TEDF heroes) and so I just wanted to take this opportunity to share with you some of my highlights of our work with heroes last year.

In total, through your incredible support, we sponsored 112 amazing people and teams in 2025, which was a 10% increase on the number of applications we supported in 2024. Of these applications, 72 were for completely new heroes, 34 were from existing heroes looking to undertake new courses or complete additional years towards a qualification and we had 6 applications from teams. The number of teams we supported was double that of 2024 and the total number of people in these teams was over 50, which is more than in any previous years…..

  ….and behind each of these numbers sits a truly wonderful paediatric professional, working incredibly hard to provide brilliant care for children every day whilst also seeking to gain new skills and expertise to deliver even better care in the future. You can read about 2 of these amazing professionals, Amber and Megan, in our 2025 Impact Statement, Impact Statement 2025 – The Evie Dove Foundation where we also share the headlines of the work of the Foundation last year, and I just wanted to share a couple of stories from other heroes who wrote to us last year to thank us for supporting them, , to pass on their thanks to you and tell you a little more about and the opportunities you have made possible…..

The first is from Dr Hannah Marshall, a paediatrician and specialist in children’s allergies working in London 

There has been a significant increase in paediatric allergies in the UK, with a dramatic rise in prevalence over the last 25 years, and food allergy cases in children nearly doubling in the last 15 years. This rise is a major public health concern, and it is the most common chronic disorder in children in the UK, with higher rates than other countries. For the Foundation, unsurprisingly, paediatric allergy has been one of our key specialist areas, with many clinicians looking for support and help to enhance their knowledge and expertise. We have supported doctors, nurses and dieticians to gain specialist qualifications in this important field, including 10 clinicians to gain a master’s level qualification.

In 2023, Dr Hannah Marshall applied for funding for year 2 of the MSc in Allergy at Imperial College London, when she was a trainee doctor at Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospital, having worked for 11 years training as a doctor in children’s services. We were proud to support Hannah in both this application and in her application for year 3 funding to complete her MSc earlier this year. 

In November, we received the following email from Hannah:

I just wanted to let you know that I got my results this week for my Masters in Allergy, and received a distinction. I am so proud of myself and hope this shows you how hard I worked to use the money as well as I could. I cannot thank you all enough for the funding for my second and third year of the course, allowing me to continue and not have to fit in extra shifts on top of my job and studying to cover it. The course has already transformed my career path from general paediatrics to paediatric allergy, and made a big difference to the care I can offer children. 

My final year project focused on making oral  immunotherapy more widely accessible for children on the NHS. Oral Immunotherapy is a treatment for food allergy to make children more tolerant to their allergen and therefore safer and able to live a more normal, less fearful life. I’m presenting some of my data at a conference this week, to help other services expand their offering for children with food allergy.Thank you so much for accepting my application for funding 2.5 years ago.

Thank you thank you thank you. I’ll continue to shout about the foundation and the great work you do, and pay it forward.

Whilst the NHS will always help people to secure their core training, there is little funding available for people like Hannah to complete a master’s level qualification which allows them to be truly specialist and offer . With your support we are building a better set of services for the thousands of children with serious allergies in the UK. Thank you for enabling us to support the wonderful Hannah. 

The second hero thank you comes from Sophie Cripps, clinical psychologist working in a paediatric palliative care service in Newham, London. 

Sophie works with children with life-threatening and life limiting physical health conditions, providing support to children and their families including supporting families with bereavement. Through your generous support, we were able to support Sophie to complete the Child Focused Systemic Practice Intermediate Course at The Institute of Family Therapy, to help Sophie to better support families during the most difficult times of their lives.

Last year, Sophie wrote to update us on her studies:

I enjoy working with children and young people who are living alongside serious illness, their siblings and parents. It is important to me that I support the whole family and that I provide a safe space to in which we can be creative and playful whilst talking about what is most important to them in life. Together we engage in lots of arts and crafts, creating keepsakes for their parents and siblings, as well as special memorabilia for their family home. It has long been my dream to engage in further training in family therapy and to enhance my skills in working creativity and playfully with children.

I am so truly grateful to the Evie Dove foundation for supporting this dream by so kindly sponsoring me. So far, the course has helped me to be more attentive to issues of power and difference, thereby enabling me to become more culturally conscious when working with families. I am very excited to continue on this learning journey to provide the best care possible to families going through the hardest times in life. 

Like many of our heroes, Sophie has committed to raising fund for the Foundation so she can fund another hero’s training, which is just incredible and Sophie will be running the London Marathon for us in April https://theeviedovefoundation.org/campaign/sophie-cripps/ 

Thank you for your generous support for Sophie, as she works every day with the sickest of children.

There are stories just like this behind every one of our fantastic heroes and I hope these stories help to show how, with your support, we are making such a difference to children’s health care across the UK. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who has supported us so far to make all of this possible. 

Join us at a Foundation event in 2026

We so hope you will be able to join us at a Foundation event in 2026 and I just wanted to end this newsletter by giving you some dates for your diary 

Friday February 27^th 2026 – lunch with Sir Jason Kenny CBE at Rocksalt, Folkestone

We are so fortunate to continue to have the strong support of the Rocksalt group of restaurants, who are hosting our first major event of 2026 on Friday 27th February at 12:15pm  where you are invited to join an unforgettable afternoon with Great Britain’s most successful Olympian.

Sir Jason Kenny CBE is one of the most decorated cyclists in sporting history. Across an extraordinary career, he claimed seven Olympic gold medals and two silver medals, alongside multiple World and European Championship titles — firmly cementing his status as a legend of British sport.

Renowned for his calm focus, relentless work ethic and dominance on the track, Sir Jason was a defining figure in Team GB’s golden era of cycling and continues to inspire athletes around the world.

Rocksalt have generously arranged this lunch as a rare opportunity to hear first-hand stories from an exceptional career at the very highest level, at the same time as fund raising for the Evie Dove Foundation. Previous events at Rocksalt have raised more than £13,000 and supported 4 individual heroes and a team of 12, we hope you can join us for this special event. 

Advance notice of other dates for your diary!

It just leaves me to thank you once again for all your incredible support, helping us to build better NHS services for children in honour of our beautiful Evie. I do hope you have enjoyed reading about some of the incredible people you have helped us support and look forward to doing it all again, with your help, in 2026!

Sending all my love,

Caroline (Evie’s Aunty Callie)