Subiaco: Helping Little Hands celebrates a year of caring for neonatal intensive care families

HELPING Little Hands is celebrating one year of support for parents and families going through one of the toughest times of their lives – including putting more than 1500 meals on the table.

The group’s co-founders met in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at King Edward Memorial Hospital 12 months ago and realised so much more was needed to help the families of little ones.

“Spending time in the NICU is incredibly stressful without having to think about grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, and mowing, especially if there are siblings at home. Our programs are about taking away the stress of those everyday, necessary tasks,” Mrs Crassweller said.

Helping Little Hands’ first activity was the nutritious nibbles drop – the group spent hours shopping for food to ensure it was nutritious and within their tight budget.

The group now offers two snack drops a week thanks to help from partner charities, donors and volunteers.

It also manages to put food on the table for families after a long day in the NICU thanks to Blue Spoon, and is able to connect parents with massages and pilates, baby massages, fuel vouchers and more.

“It’s pretty humbling to think we’ve played even a small part in making the NICU experience a little better,” Mrs Crassweller said.

The team is just about to start supporting NICU families in Perth Children’s Hospital.

“In a nutshell – year one, one hospital, year two, two hospital,” Mrs Crassweller said.

“Where to from there, who can say?”