About Children With AIDS Charity

Children with AIDS Charity was set up in 1992 to help the youngest of those infected or affected by HIV/AIDS maintain a good quality of life. It is a national UK charity with the aim of working towards a future without poverty or prejudice for these children and their families.

There are three core services: a Hardship & Respite Project which offers direct assistance to families with a child infected or affected by HIV/AIDS; a Transport Service which ensures children get to hospital appointments, access support groups and for the couriering of medication in certain circumstances; and an Education Programme, promoting awareness via workshops delivered in schools and community centres, and by providing a range of literature to educate and inform children, parents and carers by mail order.

Our history

In 1991 a Specialist Paediatric HIV Service was established in St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, London. In 1992, the team were seeing an increase in the number of children they were caring for and seeing the impact that HIV had on children and their families.

Rebecca Handel, whose daughter Bonnie was being cared for at St Mary’s met Jo Dodge, the coordinator of the service, to discuss the shortage in the existing provision of services for children infected and affected by HIV. Being white, middle-class and Jewish, Rebecca shattered all HIV-positive stereotypes, having become infected with HIV through a blood transfusion in her second pregnancy, before blood was screened for the virus.

Together with the paediatric team of St. Mary’s they decided to start a charity that could respond to the specific practical, emotional and educational requirements of children and their families infected and affected by HIV. A committee was formed in 1992 and on the 12th October 1993 Children with AIDS Charity was officially registered. Bonnie Handel, Rebecca’s daughter, died in St Mary’s Hospital the following December (04-12-93); Rebecca Handel died on 1 January 1995.