As a former convent in the North-East is transformed into the country's second baby hospice, Lucia Charnock travelled to Liverpool to see how the first one brings comfort to families in pain

THREE-YEAR-OLD Nicole is watching her favourite TV programme - The Tweenies - in the large lounge room, which is the hub of activity at Zoe's Place Baby Hospice. Grace, also three, is playing with a doll as a group of nurses sing along with Nicole and talk with Grace. Another nurse is holding hands with four-year-old James, who is asleep in his chair.

And although there is one nurse for each child, all the staff are taking a turn with 12-month-old Kiera, who cannot support herself, is wired up to an oxygen tank, and has fits. She cannot settle and the nurses patiently pass her from one to another to see if any of them can give the little girl some comfort and relief.

Nicole's dad, Rick, pops in for a quick cuddle and says Nicole has come on leaps and bounds since she started going to Zoe's. Her weekly stay there allows him and his wife time with their other two children.

Kiera spends three nights a week at Zoe's and it is easy to understand how frustrated and isolated her parents must be when she requires attention 24 hours a day and how Zoe's Place has come to play such an important part in all of their lives.

Zoe's Place is the country's first baby hospice; the second one is due to open later this year in a former convent at Normanby, Teesside.

The popular perception of a hospice is that it is a place where terminally-ill people go to die. It is a perception that Zoe's is keen to break down and it starts with its name. Its full title is Zoe's Place for Special Babies - Zoe means gift of life in Greek.

The babies go to Zoe's Place to live. The vast majority of them have severe multiple disabilities and come for respite care to allow their families a break or to spend quality time with other children.

It becomes a home from home, where all are comfortable. The staff are family friends and get emotionally involved, rather than medical professionals maintaining a clinical distance.

The hospice can provide overnight care for up to six babies in two pretty nurseries. But the only time they are in the nursery is at night.

Zoe's also has a room full of flashing lights and neon tubes which stimulate the children, but which cost £21,000 to set up. The hospice itself needs £350,000 to £400,000 a year for running costs and the vast majority of that comes directly from fund raising.

Hospice manager Anne Johnson says: "Parents get fed up of hearing about how hard it must be for them and how they must wish they could turn back the clock. I remember one mum saying to me that, of course, she wished her child hadn't had all the difficulties, but what can you do? She said her child was her flesh and blood and she loved him all the same."

Most of the babies at Zoe's require respite care, but there are some who need palliative care because they are terminally ill.

Mrs Johnson says staff at Zoe's do not say a child is terminally ill until the moment they draw their last breath, but there are a number of systems, developed over the seven years Zoe's has been in existence, to help grieving families.

The hospice staff work around the needs of the family - not just parents but brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles, because the death of every child is unique and individual, and so is the way a family deals with it.

Zoe's Nursery could seem morbid but it is a pioneering way in which Zoe's Place is helping to break down taboos surrounding death. The centrepiece is a cot, specially built around a refrigeration unit. The baby is placed here after it has died and before the funeral takes place.

The nursery is warm and cosy, prettily decorated. The child looks as though he or she is sleeping. It is somewhere to say goodbye.

The nursery allows grieving families to spend time with their child in peaceful and comfortable surroundings 24 hours a day, away from a cold, clinical funeral parlour, open only during office hours.

The staff can also help with funeral arrangements and because, like the Teesside hospice, the Liverpool centre is in a former convent, there is a chapel where a service can take place, if the family wishes.

The parents are in comfortable, familiar surroundings with people they have grown to know intimately, who care about them and their child.

Mrs Johnson has taken on various roles for grieving families - she has packed children's caskets with their favourite toys, lowered them into the casket, given them their final kiss. One family asked her to help lower their child's coffin into her grave.

The service itself is viewed as a celebration of life - for all that the child has achieved.

A special memorial book has also been set up and features a picture and the name and dates of each child and tribute from family members. It is written whenever the family feels up to writing it, which could be years after the child has died.

It could all seem very morbid and depressing but happily, on average, just one name is added to the book each year