Hope House Children’s Hospice has today received a boost after unveiling new plans to expand its services.

Bosses at the charity, which cares for children suffering from serious illnesses and their families, have announced they want to expand counselling services, as well as improving the hospice’s neo-natal section and help children within the service manage the transition to becoming adults.

It comes after it was revealed audience members at Shrewsbury’s Theatre Severn pantomime Aladdin raised more than £3,000 for the charity through donations.

The cash is a welcome relief for the charity’s bosses, who last year saw individual donations drop by 35 per cent, leaving the hospice £200,000 worse off.

Andy Goldsmith, chief executive of the Morda-based charity, said: “Individual donations are down by about a third but we are confident we will weather this. The drop is not affecting anything and we are going to grow and expand the service for families and bereaved.

“Other areas we are looking at include support for neo-natal children. It is something we want to do more of and have more support. The third area is the transition of children to adult services.

“We want to do more to help the family with that transition. We want to help them with the continuation of support.

“It is important for us to look at what needs to be provided.”

The charity believes it will be able to provide the new services as it benefits from support by businesses and fundraising groups as well as trusts and legacies.

Mr Goldsmith said: “We want to say a big thank you to everybody for the support they give.

“We do recognise there are a lot of requests from charities asking for money, We have very loyal supporters and we are grateful.”

The charity collections at Theatre Severn were the brainchild of actor Brad Fitt, who played Widow Twankey. He described the £3,314 raised as an ‘amazing’ effort.

The hospice has held a number of fundraising events, including a record-breakers event, a Santa Run, a pendant raffle, parachute jumps and coffee mornings.