THE sister of a girl whose death inspired the creation of Claire House children's hospice has thanked staff and shoppers at a Wirral shopping centre for raising £9,000 for the charity.

Tracey Patton spoke movingly of how she still thinks about her sibling every day and how important it is to support the Bebington-based hospice for families of terminally-ill children.

Tracey's sister Claire Louise Cain died just two weeks before her tenth birthday in 1989, after losing her battle with a malignant tumour.

Within months her grieving family began fundraising to set up Claire House. Tracey, who was just eleven years old when she lost her sister, organised the first event, a car boot sale, with her dad, raising more than £100.

Eventually the hospice opened almost a decade later in 1998, and seventeen years on still provides vital support for the region’s sickest children, and their loved ones.

In a bid to help boost funds, the Pyramids Shopping Centre in Birkenhead held a Christmas grotto that raised £9000. 

Tracey said: "I just want to thank everyone involved. Every small amount counts, but £9,000 is such a fantastic sum."

She said the money would be used to provide support for families using Claire House, to ease their pain with help and advice that her family never had access to.

Claire became ill in 1987 and doctors found a malignant tumour behind her nose and eye. She kept on smiling and laughing, but for her family it was difficult to maintain a normal family environment, particularly after the tumour was found to have grown in 1988.  Sadly a cure was not to be found, and she died with her parents at her side, in July 1989.

Tracey said: "After Claire died, my mum and dad realised how much easier it would have been if there had been a hospice on the Wirral.

"If your child has a life limiting illness you don’t need life to get in the way. You need to spend the time with your child, and with your family, making special memories, and not worrying about whether you can afford to get there to see them and be together.

"Now with Claire House the families get much better support, there was nothing like that for us. It makes everything a lot more bearable."

The Claire House grotto welcomed 2,191 children. Pyramids Shopping Centre Director Derek Millar said: “We are proud to support Claire House and the fantastic work the charity does supporting families as they go through such tough times.

"As Tracey's local shopping centre, it means a lot to have been able to raise £9,000.

"I would like to thank all the staff who helped make this possible, and in particular all the customers who came and visited. We could not have done this without their support."

She thanked fundraisers, in particular those at Pyramids Shopping Centre, where she regularly shops as a local to Wallasey.

She said: "Without them, Claire House couldn’t remain open. We need everybody’s support to do everything we do.”

Paying tribute to her sister’s spirit, Tracey said: “I think of her every day, all the time. You can’t not. I wonder what she would have grown up to be like, would she have had children like me.

"She was quite different to me, she was very outgoing, always laughing and smiling, she sang on the stage, while I was always the quiet one.”

Tracey, now 37, is a pre-school and nursery manager at St Peter and Paul Catholic Primary School in New Brighton, and lives in Wallasey with husband Kevin and four children, aged 19, twelve, eight, and one.

“When our eldest Amy got to Claire’s age I thought how hard it must have been for my mum. It was hard to be Claire’s sister and go through what we did, but it wasn’t until I was a mum that I realised how hard it must have been for my mum.

To turn it around and create something positive out of her loss was an amazing thing to have done.”

Tracey has continued fundraising and raising awareness about Claire House, but said it needs the public, particularly Wirral residents to keep helping.