Claire House Children's Hospice

Claire House Children's Hospice supports families across every part of their journey - from families needing support, to the donors, supporters, and volunteers whose involvement makes that support possible. A charity serving that many different people needs a website that works for all of them.

The existing site couldn't do that. Navigation was confusing, performance slowed every time new content was added, and the design wasn't built mobile-first, limiting who could actually use it well. The Claire House team couldn't create or update donation and campaign pages without technical help, and restrictions on forms and video meant the site could show only a fraction of the warmth and personality behind the hospice's work.

We spent time on-site with Claire House, meeting staff and hearing directly from families - insight that shaped an information architecture built around real, sometimes difficult journeys, including the sensitivity needed around topics like bereavement. The site's structure was rebuilt so that every audience, whichever journey brought them there, could find their way through with care.

Claire House's identity - vibrant, warm, and instantly recognisable offline - needed to feel just as alive online. The new website carries that same energy: bright colours and joyful imagery balanced with genuine sensitivity for the more serious subjects the hospice also has to address.

Behind the design, using Python we built bespoke applications for Claire House's Shops, Resources, and Sponsorship Events - custom-built rather than adapted from something generic, because Claire House's needs weren't generic either. Donations were handled with the same precision: Giant Giving manages one-off giving, integrated directly with Claire House's Access CRM, while recurring donations run through a separate system entirely - two different journeys, brought together seamlessly through a custom-built donation component so supporters never see the complexity behind it.

Our relationship continues well past launch. When it became clear that some of Claire House's storytelling relied on images alone - leaving some users unable to access that content - we built a new, accessible way to tell those stories instead, one that works for everyone rather than assuming everyone can see it the same way.

Every audience Claire House serves - families, donors, supporters - can now find what they need without a member of the team having to step in and help them through it. That matters for a charity whose team's time is better spent on the families they support than on navigating and fixing a website.

The Claire House team can also build and adapt campaign and donation pages themselves, without waiting on technical support every time something needs to change - a small shift day-to-day, but one that adds up over a year of campaigns, appeals, and events. Behind the scenes, one-off and recurring donations now run through a single, seamless experience for supporters, even though two different systems are doing the work underneath.

The bespoke Shops, Resources, and Sponsorship Events applications mean Claire House isn't working around generic tools that don't quite fit - each was built for exactly what the charity needed, not adapted from something built for someone else.

Perhaps most importantly, the site now reflects Claire House as it actually is: vibrant and full of warmth, without losing the sensitivity that some of its work genuinely demands. A charity built on both joy and grief needed a website that could hold both - and now it does.