The Children's Hospice Project (CHP), The Nippon Foundation, and Uniqlo on Friday announced plans for TSURUMI Children’s Hospice, Japan’s first community-supported hospice for children with life-threatening conditions.

Free of charge and run by volunteers using donations, it will offer medical, educational, and childcare resources, as well as respite care services. Volunteers include medical practitioners, nurses, school teachers, and nursery staff. By opening parts to the public, it aims for patients and local children to play together, to create a local community and feeling of home for the children and their families, while eliciting understanding and support among the general public.

The TSURUMI Children’s Hospice will have playrooms, living rooms, kitchens, and accommodation for children and their families, in 979.11 square meters of floor space over two floors, on a 2,000-square-meter property. It is planned for the Tsurumi Ryokuchi Flower Expo Memorial Park, in Osaka’s Tsurumi Ward. Construction starts in mid-March 2015, with plans to open in December.

In Japan, around 200,000 children aged 15 and under suffer from such incurable illnesses as cerebral palsy and pediatric cancer. Medical advances extend and save lives, and the number of children with grave afflictions requiring intensive care is growing, creating a challenge for their families. In 2012, the CHP proposed to Uniqlo's Clothes for Smiles program a Japanese version of Helen & Douglas House Children's hospice – the first such facility, launched in Oxford, UK, in 1982. It became one of eight initiatives that Uniqlo chose to support from among more than 700 proposed from around the world under its Clothes for Smiles program.

Uniqlo and The Nippon Foundation, which supports the CHP, agreed to jointly fund the construction and operation of the hospice, and in 2014 the Osaka city government approved the CHP's proposal to build on a property in Tsurumi Ryokuchi.

© Japan Today