Faith

Sister Frances Dominica decided on a radical change in her life when she was just 22.

Shocking her family and friends, she decided to become a nun in the Church of England, a choice she says she has never regretted.

It was the following year that she was contacted by the mother of Helen, a two-year-old child who was critically ill in hospital, having been recently diagnosed with a brain tumour.

Sister Frances said: "Helen stayed in hospital for six months and during that time I got to know her family very well.

"At the end of that time they were told there was no hope of recovery, and they knew immediately that the place where Helen belonged was at home.

"Helen needed 24 hour care, 365 days a year, and her parents did not know if Helen would live a day or 40 years. There was no way of knowing.

"The family, like so many others, began to experience  loneliness and isolation. The weeks went by and sometimes Helen's parents had no sleep at all.

"It wasn't just the physical exhaustion, it was the cruelly prolonged grief that couldn't be resolved. Helen hadn't died but neither was she getting any better."

Three months after Helen moved home, Sister Frances plucked up the courage to ask her parents if she could look after their child a for a few days whenever they needed a break. The parents agreed, and Sister Frances became Helen's respite carer, allowing Helen's parents to catch up on sleep, focus on the other children in the family or have a weekend away.

Sister Frances said: "I began to think, if it's helpful to this family, are there other families out there who could benefit?"

That was the beginning of Helen House, the world's first children's hospice.

Sister Frances said: "The most important people in the planning of Helen House were were Helen's parents. From the start we knew it would be small and flexible, it would provide one to one care and the the real experts would be the families. The model for the building was home, rather than hospital, the furnishings were things that children would enjoy having in their bedrooms."

Helen House opened in 1982, and has since been joined by Douglas House, which offers similar respite care to young people aged 18 to 40. Today Helen & Douglas House charity provides professional care and support to around 250 children and young adults, as well as their families.

Sister Frances said her faith had deepened throughout her life through her work at the hospice.

She said: "I believe my faith has gone deeper, to gut level. It's the ground in which I'm rooted. Without my faith nothing would make sense at all.

"When I think about the children at Helen House, I love to use the analogy of the chrysalis and the butterfly. I think that sometimes, the chrysalis for whatever reason has served it's purpose very quickly, and new life emerges just as the butterfly does.

"Tantalisingly, that new life emerges beyond our sight and  is beyond our reach and we can only wonder and wait."