A London man whose foundation gives gifts to sick and dying kids at London's Children's Hospital is flabbergasted to learn that a new hospital policy has effectively banned him from the property.

For more than 30 years, Leo Larizza has responded to requests from parents of sick children in care at Children's Hospital, which is part of the Victoria Hospital campus operated by London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC). Many of the children whose parents contact Larizza are facing terminal diagnoses.

He began delivering gifts to kids in their hospital rooms back in 1985. When his mother died just before Christmas in 1998, he renamed the charity the Teresina Larizza Charities (TLC) Foundation after her.

Larizza gathers gift requests from kids and delivers the gifts to their hospital beds. In each case, Larizza says he only delivers a gift with the parents' consent and if they put his name on the hospital's visitors list.

So why is he being banned now?

CBC News has called LHSC for comment. No one was available to comment early Wednesday evening but the hospital said they would make a spokesperson available Thursday for an interview.

Larizza says the hospital explained to him that they've changed their access policy and now want all donated gifts to go through the hospital's own foundation, which is called the Children's Health Foundation.

'They're trying to control everything'

Larizza says he's made every effort to work with the hospital and would never do anything that would compromise patients' care.

"What they're trying to do is control everything that happens at that hospital," he said.

"The families are reaching out to me," he said. "They have already given me permission to enter the room, they've already put me on their visitors list. So I'm not coming in and saying 'I just want to visit some random child.'

"I do not go room to room asking parents what they want. It's by invite only."

Larizza says the hospital has been trying to stop him from giving out gifts at the hospital "for five years, and I've always fought them."

But he says while he may be barred from the hospital property, it won't stop him from getting gifts to kids in need.

"I just have to figure out another way of getting gifts to the kids on Christmas Eve ... nobody will ever stop the TLC Foundation from giving gifts to kids. It's not gonna happen."

Since the new policy began being strictly enforced last week, Larizza has still managed to give out gifts. But to do it, he's had to meet parents off the property, or in the hospital parking lots.

"Today a mother came out in the cold and met me on the sidewalk to get a gift for her child," he said. "I'll do whatever it takes."

Over the years, Larizza has visited hundreds of sick kids at the hospital. In the saddest cases, he's been with the families at the funerals for their children.

He says it's particularly painful the hospital's new policy means he will no longer be able to form a personal bond with the sick children and their families.

"The worst part of this is that we will not be able to give a child a hug and tell them everything is going to be OK, or make them laugh and forget about where they are, if only for a little while," Larizza said in a post on TLC's Facebook page.

The post went up just after 4 p.m. Wednesday and has received more than 200 comments, many of them critical of LHSC and its policy.

Many of the commenters can't believe that the hospital would enact a policy that prevents him from visiting sick children to give them gifts inside a public hospital, even in cases when the parents consent to the visits.

"What a bunch of Grinches," said one comment. "For some of these children it could be their last Christmas and they are taking away what might be the only happiness they will have."