Where Angels Fear To Tread

In 1973, a small group of parents and health professionals set out to overturn the inhumane and rigid treatment children received in hospitals around the country. To do this, they formed the Association for the Welfare of Children in Hospital (AWCH), and their vision was to put the welfare of child at the centre of every decision that was made about them.

AWCH’s goals of parents staying with their sick children in hospital to give them comfort and support, being taken seriously by doctors and nurses, and even being allowed to bring in a child’s favourite toy were met with entrenched opposition by medical staff and hospital boards.

Yet in only a few years, AWCH succeeded in changing hospital policy dramatically. Sylvia Rapley-Anderson was one of the founders of AWCH. She was a committee member, then its first national Research and Development Officer. This is her story of those three years that transformed children’s hospital care forever.