One of Sarah Sea’s favourite memories is from a Spanish holiday she went on with her two sons.
Getting up early one morning, the family carefully made their way to the beach to watch the sunrise over the ocean.
‘Phoenix loved being by the sea,’ Sarah remembers. ‘It was his happiest place to be.’
Her youngest son, Phoenix, had been diagnosed with Infantile Neuroaxonal Dystrophy when he was just 18 months old. She was warned that this rare degenerative disease could mean her little boy wouldn’t live to see 10.
It was a diagnosis that shocked Sarah to the core, because although she had spotted a few concerning symptoms, she never thought it would have been so serious.
Soon after, she made the decision to take her sons away for a break in Lanzarote so they could digest the news together.
‘Phoenix hadn’t deteriorated as much and was still quite small so I could carry him easily,’ the 48-year-old single mum tells Metro.
However, in the weeks and months that followed, Sarah could only watch as the toddler began to lose skills he had only just developed like walking, toileting, eating solids, and talking.
The following year, when Phoenix was three and her eldest nine, she planned another much-needed holiday. But this time, he required lots of equipment as he was no longer able to stand or keep his head upright.
Sarah also had to add a food blender, neck support, specialist pram, oxygen canisters, and heaps of other medical equipment to their holiday packing list, alongside the suntan lotion and swimsuits.
‘It was all on me,’ she says, recalling the week of lugging luggage and medical equipment, while also tending to her son 24/7.
‘I was trying to be a mum alongside all the pressure. It was exciting being with my boys, but sad because of the diagnosis. I was processing the fact he was dying. I felt panicked to do something and make the best memories we could. But at the same time, I was hugely overwhelmed. I couldn’t leave him at all.’
The week-long holiday had been anything but relaxing, and when the family arrived back home, Sarah made the heartbreaking call not to take another similar holiday again.
It’s a decision hundreds of families across the UK feel forced to make every year. Desperately in need of respite and escapism, they simply don’t have the means or support to take some sort of break.
However, what many don’t realise is that there are some sectors of the travel industry working hard to help them.
In an initiative supported by the likes of TV presenter Jennie Bond, MP Penny Mordaunt, and even The Princess Royal, hotel rooms and suites are being donated free of charge by hoteliers in a bid to give deserving families the holiday they will never forget.
Where the hotels are outside of the UK, they partner with charities who provide either a grant or directly pay for flights for these families.
One hotel group that does this is Idiliq Hotels and Resorts through their Kind Holidays initiative. Their website contains a step-by-step guide showing other hoteliers how they can copy their programme and includes links to UK charities looking for free accommodation both in the UK and abroad.
‘These holidays give many families a chance to make their last happy memories together before their loved one passes on,’ Grant Peires, Director of Communications for IDILIQ Hotels & Resorts, tells Metro. ‘It offers them a chance to forget about hospitals and treatments. It gives those that have recently lost a child, parent or sibling a chance to find a little solace and time to remember their loved one.
‘It can be a lifeline, a chance to step back from the abyss. An opportunity to press reset and to let go of those traumatic events that haunt so many of our heroes.’
Peires explains that at the end of June each year, he contacts charities they work with to enquire about their preferred time of the year, desired accommodation size, and locations for families for the following year.
‘We also determine if any potential guests require wheelchair-friendly units or have specific accessibility needs,’ he says. ‘We then allocate space at the relevant resorts where available.’
So far IDILIQ has helped around 300 families – one of them was Sarah’s.
Five years after her overwhelming holiday to Lanzarote, she attended a charity event, speaking about the importance of equipment and the cost of it. Sat at her table was an Idiliq representative, who offered to send her family on holiday for free.
‘We were in a bit of a dire situation at the time,’ Sarah remembers. ‘We’d just had adaptations done in the house and had to buy a lot of new equipment, so I was in a lot of debt.’
The following summer, in 2013, Sarah and her two boys gathered everything they needed, ready for a two-week, fully-funded holiday in Spain. By this point, two-year-old Phoenix needed around the clock care, was on oxygen at all times and unable to move at all. Just getting to the airport was a feat in itself, but three concierges met the family to help carry all of Phoenix’s equipment.
They arrived at their apartment, greeted by a path that had been adapted especially for her son’s needs.
‘They wanted us to be able to go and watch the sunset and their path wasn’t wide enough,’ she remembers.
The staff did everything to make the family’s holiday accessible, even taking them shopping for food and paying for what they needed.
Around the pool, Sarah says they felt like ‘a normal family,’ even with Phoenix’s pram and oxygen – something she hadn’t experience for a long time.
‘We were made to feel like royalty,’ she remembers. ‘There was so much kindness. I just felt like a mum with my two kids because everything was thought of. It was a breath of fresh air.’
For families like Sarah’s, whose children have all-encompassing health needs, a free holiday can be ‘transformative’.
In her previous role as Director of the Cystic Fibrosis Holiday Fund, Laurie Howard worked with hotels who offered free holidays for families whose children had Cystic Fibrosis.
‘The difference [in families] after their holiday was extraordinary,’ Laurie tells Metro. ‘They told us the break was a chance to feel like a normal family, where the relentless problems that accompany a serious health condition could be left behind. Life can feel like a gruelling routine and the holiday lifted them out of this and opened their horizons.’
Stress-free, fully paid holidays are literally just what the doctor would order for so many families with children who are ill or disabled, but are also a literal lifeline for military personnel.
‘While many armed forces families enjoy healthy lives, the pressures of deployment, periods of separation and social isolation from family and friends can have a negative impact to the health and wellbeing of the spouses/partners and their children,’ explains Alex Youngs, Operations Director at charity Give Us Time.
He also works with hotels to provide free holidays for those who have been in the armed forces, such as Scott Darroch.
Scott spent just under ten years serving in the British Army in Northern Ireland, with tours in Bosnia and Kosovo, before finishing in 2004.
‘I witnessed the worst that humanity could do to each other,’ the 48-year-old tells Metro. ‘It stuck with me.’
After he left the Army, the trauma of everything he had seen and heard for years began to disrupt his life.
‘I started seeing and hearing things,’ says Scott. ‘I had flashbacks and periods of dissociation. I had periods of incontinence, just losing bodily functions. It makes you feel rubbish. I didn’t enjoy life and wasn’t very nice to live with. I masked a lot of things with alcohol and a lot of drugs.’
After briefly opening up to a friend who also worked for the British forces, Scott saw a doctor and was referred to the charity Combat Stress, who went on to diagnose him with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder. While at a recovery centre, Scott heard about the charity Give Us Time, who gives military families in need the chance to rebuild by providing respite breaks.
Since retiring, Scott and his wife had only been on short breaks very close to their home in Northern Ireland.
‘You’d have to be hyper vigilant about going anywhere,’ he says, speaking about the thought of travelling abroad. ‘It’s a hassle. You’re in a confined space. You’re dealing with crowds. There is security.’
But when he heard his application with Give Us Time was accepted, he decided to take a chance on a holiday in the sun.
‘People were giving up their time to help,’ he says. ‘I didn’t want to let them down.’
Arriving in Costa del Sol at their self catering apartment overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, Scott could feel his pent up tension disappear.
‘It was a catalyst for me to springboard forward,’ he says. ‘It gave Joanne and I time to sit down and talk, something we don’t do with a mental illness.’
When he came back home, Scott applied for the Invictus Games and in recent years, he has started openly discussing his feelings and experiences, hoping to help people who have served in the military.
‘These holidays are lifesavers,’ he says. ‘It’s a chance to be a family without any stress or restraints of home life.’
Less than two years after their holiday to Spain, Sarah’s son Phoenix sadly passed away. But the memories they were able to make will never be forgotten.
The holiday meant the world to Sarah, so much so that she plans to spread his ashes there as the sun rises.
‘It is my absolute heartfelt wish that other companies, hoteliers and holiday providers would be open to considering assisting families like mine,’ she adds.
‘To give us the chance to experience such a simple, beautiful thing as a holiday together.’
