Lifting the spirits of children and their suffering families will make for a better Bermuda, Hamilton Lions were told this week.

And Shirley Higgs, who started Child's Wish after helping one family under great stress due to illness, said the registered charity would begin a campaign to increase public awareness of its programmes.

Child's Wish assists families caring for children through providing a wish or need that the family might not be able to afford or have the inclination to provide at times of crisis.

But the benefit of someone paying for a child's weekly dance lesson or a week-long trip for a parents and siblings to Disney World is beyond measurement, Mrs. Higgs said.

"Child's Wish aims to give children experiencing serious difficulty a wish that will lift their spirits and make them feel supported and cared about in the community,'' she explained.

These wishes are centred around the needs of the child and are limited only by the imagination of the proposer.

Larger wishes, like trips abroad, are granted only where appropriate and are usually based on the family dealing with serious injury or illness and numbing daily routines.

Mrs. Higgs said it was her experience as a nurse for 20 years that even a little money applied in a judicious manner "could go a long way''.

"The payoff can be enormous,'' she said. "We have a little girl whose mother is gravely ill. We make it possible for her to take dance classes which was her wish.'' "She wants to dance. It's great stress relief. It gives her time away from her problems and it cost us all of $120,'' Mrs. Higgs added.

Child's Wish has begun building a relationship with the American Make a Wish Foundation, making a reciprocal relationship possible and letting wishes be fulfilled.

And it will raise its profile with people in the helping professions including principals, counsellors, social workers, and medical doctors.

The lack of nurturing extended families is also taking its toll on the Island, with stresses and illnesses being weathered by working parents rather than non-working grandparents, Mrs. Higgs observed.

"When something serious goes wrong, there is just not the ability to provide anything like the support traditionally enjoyed,'' she said.

"Children need positive feedback. Without it they develop low self-esteem and a host of attendant problems.'' Some children manifest the stress by angry behaviour, being dysfunctional, become sexually active earlier, use and abuse of drugs, and are apathetic toward their education, Mrs. Higgs said.

Helping children: Shirley Higgs founded Child's Wish of Bermuda, a charity that has taken families to Disney World but also provides dance lessons for a child.