Our starting-point

All children prefer to be at home in a familiar environment with their families. They feel safe and secure together with their parents, siblings and grandparents. But in Germany, 5000 children and young people are so ill that they need the help of a university hospital. Such a diagnosis often implies a long period of suffering – both for children and for their families. During this difficult time, children’s yearning for normality, and for family and home is even greater than it otherwise might be.

Our vision

That’s why we want terminally ill children to be able to spend as much time as possible at home with their families, receiving out-patient intensive and palliative care from the university hospital. The idea is for terminally ill children to maintain the highest possible quality of life until the end.

Our role

In Germany, at-home care of terminally ill children is extremely underfunded. The only chance for the 5,000 incurably ill children, adolescents and young adults in Germany to spend the end of their lives at home and to die there, is if private financial supporters like the Valentina Stiftung fill the immense funding gap in the system.

Our motivation

Not long ago now, our youngest daughter and sister Valentina (13) came to the end of her life. For a year she had battled an aggressive bone tumour with which she had been diagnosed at age twelve. The team at PalliKJUR gave Valentina the option of dying at home. But she felt safer at the children’s oncological unit at the university hospital than at home, since her breathing issues and intense pain had made her dependent on the reliable, professional, and continuously available palliative care provided there. And so Valentina died at the age of 13 in the Universitätsklinik Ulm. We learnt from experience how painful it can be for everybody involved to say goodbye to a child in such a sterile and impersonal place.