Spinnaker, a global maritime recruitment agency, has reached a major milestone with its fundraising, raising £3.5million for Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity (GOSH Charity) to help give seriously ill children the best chance, and best childhood possible.
Thanks to the OSCAR campaign (Ocean and Shipping Community Advancing Children’s Health and Research), which was set up in 2011 by Phil Parry after his son, Oscar, was treated at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) for a form of childhood cancer, a total of £3.5million has been raised to help support the hospital’s most urgent needs.
Phil was inspired to set up the campaign after his son, Oscar, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukaemia when he was three-years-old. He underwent three transplants and was ultimately cured thanks to groundbreaking medical research and care at the hospital. He is now 26 and working as a chef in Leigh-on-Sea, in Essex.
Phil Parry said “He really shouldn’t have survived. He was saved by experimental treatment after regular chemotherapy treatment stopped being effective. He needed three transplants, the third with highly specialised cells – he was the first child to be treated in the UK with this treatment.”
Parry continued: “I felt it was important to recognise the selfless devotion of the incredible medical staff at Great Ormond Street and give something back. I set up the OSCAR campaign (Ocean and Shipping Community Advancing Children’s Health and Research) in 2011, as a fundraising body that would help raise important funds for GOSH Charity. OSCAR is a play on my son’s name and by engaging the shipping community, we have been able to draw on my relationships through my role as CEO of Spinnaker, a maritime industry recruitment and HR consulting business.
“Thanks to a lot of great people in shipping, the OSCAR Campaign has raised £3.5million for GOSH Charity to go towards supporting the hospital’s most urgent needs, including helping to build the world-leading new Children’s Cancer Centre at GOSH.”
GOSH Charity is currently fundraising to help build a new Children’s Cancer Centre, to drive transformation in children’s cancer care and save more lives. This state-of-the-art new facility will be a new home for breakthrough treatments and pioneering research, helping to beat cancer for more children.
Once complete, this cutting-edge facility will give the hospital a 20% increase in capacity to treat seriously ill children, providing state-of-the-art facilities in a home-from-home environment. Purpose-built spaces will support not only life-saving clinical care, but also the emotional and psychological wellbeing of children and their families, ensuring that young patients have the best possible chance not just to survive, but to thrive. OSCAR funds are crucial to this project.
Every week in the UK, around four children lose their lives to cancer. It doesn’t need to be fatal to change a child’s life forever- it can steal their childhood, limit their potential, and take away their future.
Today, thanks to decades of research, survival rates have been transformed.
GOSH, in partnership with the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, is widely considered one of the leading centres for paediatric cancer research and treatment in the UK and internationally and has helped to transform the outcomes to a point where today, more children survive leukaemia than lose their lives to it.
In the 1960s, childhood leukaemia was overwhelmingly fatal. Around three-quarters of children diagnosed with leukaemia died from the disease. Effective chemotherapy was in its infancy, combination drug treatments had not yet been developed, there was limited understanding of how leukaemia behaves in children and clinical trials for children were rare.
Today, more than 90% of children with the most common type of leukaemia (acute lymphoblastic leukaemia) now survive. But heartbreakingly, not every child makes it.
One of the biggest challenges researchers face today is understanding why CAR T-cell therapy, which has been highly effective in treating some cancer types, does not work for around half of the children who later relapse. Finding that answer could mean saving countless young lives.
Those families whose children have been through cancer treatment understand the need for more investment into new research and treatments and have become flag-bearers for the charitable fundraising that makes GOSH so special.
Liz Tait, GOSH Charity’s Director of Fundraising, said: “We are so grateful to Phil and his ongoing, incredible support for GOSH Charity. The funds raised by the OSCAR campaign and OSCAR Dragon Boat Race are helping to give seriously ill children the best chance, and best childhood possible, and are invaluable to our ongoing appeal to make the vision of a transformative new Children’s Cancer Centre, a reality.”
As the CEO of a maritime industry recruitment and HR consulting firm, Parry has been able to enlist the shipping industry for fundraising support and they have responded remarkably.
Among its most popular fundraising events is the annual OSCAR Dragon Boat Race, which takes place on the River Thames in London, drawing 30 teams every September from across the maritime world to race, and to raise vital funds, in Oscar’s name. A day of friendly competition on the water, all in aid of raising vital funds for children’s cancer research. 2026 will mark the 11th anniversary of the event.
The OSCAR Dragon Boat event will take place on the 10th September 2026 at the Dockland Sailing & Watersports Centre in London. Find out more The OSCAR Campaign | Charity | Spinnaker