Lifelites

We meet the charity that’s using computer equipment to bring critically ill children back in touch with their friends and families.

- Barry Collins

Parents will frequently moan that they can’t get the kids off their tablets. Parents of critically ill children have the opposite problem: they often can’t find the right computer equipment for them.

Lifelites bridges the gap between disabled children and modern technology. It works with every children’s hospice in the British Isles to install computer equipment that has a profound impact on desperately ill kids. It might help children without speech to form a missing bond with their brother or sister, for example, or let them do something that other children would just take for granted, such as playing video games with friends.

All this is managed by a small charity with a dedicated volunteer network and enormous heart. We met with Lifelites’ chief executive in the aftermath of the BT Tech4Good Awards to find out more about this extraordinary organisation.

Lifelites started life as a millennium project at the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists – essentially a charitable arm of the City of London. Back then, it was about putting computers on desks for sick children, but the project ballooned. By 2006, it became a standalone charity catering for the technological needs of critically ill children and their families.

“It’s all about enhancing their lives,” said chief executive Simone Enefer-Doy. “Some are cognitively disabled, some are unable to move, some are on the autism spectrum. Whatever their ability, we want to give them something to use.”