Turning loss into hope
Ella and Jarrod Stratton know the crippling pain of losing a child to a life-limiting condition. After the passing of their beloved son Hunter in 2014, the couple established the HAS Foundation.
Ella and Jarrod Stratton were besotted when their first-born child Hunter Alfred Stratton arrived in December 2002.
“He was born very calm into the world, and he was a delightful first baby,” Ella says. “All I ever wanted was to be a mum.”
However, the couple’s joy soon turned to uncertainty and worry when Hunter began having seizures at eight weeks of age. At its worst, Hunter was having up to 100 seizures a day.
The new parents suddenly found themselves in a spiral of doctors, hospitals and tests as Hunter’s condition continued to worsen.
Doctors were never able to diagnose the exact cause of Hunter’s illness, but what they did tell Ella and Jarrod was that their beloved little boy would not live to see his first birthday.
But Hunter had other ideas, with his resilience and fighting spirit defying the odds. Years passed and the brave young boy embraced life while battling his complex medical issues.
Inspired by Hunter, Ella and Jarrod were determined to make the most of every moment with their young family, including the arrival of two more sons, Tex and Oakley.
“I call my husband Captain Adventure, because I was really nervous to take Hunter anywhere; I wanted to be close to the hospital,” Ella says. “It’s daunting having a child with complex medical needs and working out how much you need to pack, with tubes and oxygen and medications and all the things we had to have with us all the time.
“But my husband was wonderful and made sure we all got out there and created these wonderful memories – family holidays away, road trips, camping trips, family farm trips, all sorts of different things.
“Hunter jet-skied, he quad biked, he went in planes, we took him to Movie World. They’re some of the best memories we have.”
Throughout Hunter’s early life, he and the family were under the care of the medical team at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital. As Hunter became more unwell around the age of eight, Ella and Jarrod began to explore the idea of using the hospital’s palliative care services.
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“Nobody really wants to be in palliative care, because the connotations of that are devastating, dealing with the end of life,” Ella says.
“But if I’d known what the palliative team could do, as in the advocacy work and how they could support us as a family and help with medical needs, with school, all the things that they did, I would have probably said yes to being in palliative care years and years before.”
The support and advice of the palliative care team enabled Ella and Jarrod to care for Hunter at home as his conditioned worsened.
“We tried to do everything we could to stay at home, and that’s where the palliative team were incredible, because they were able to bring medications, give advice and have visits at home,” Ella says.
“The team helped us to manage whatever we wanted and how we wanted it. I don’t know what we would have done without that support. And it’s a subject that you can’t really sit down with your best friend or your mum and say, ‘What would you do in this situation?’, because it’s a very heavy topic.
“So, to have experts say, ‘whatever you choose is okay, but this is an option, or this is an option, and we can support you here’, that was incredible.”
In the final days of Hunter’s life, the family was able to keep their beloved boy comfortable at home, supported by the palliative care team, allowing them the privacy, time and space to say their goodbyes.
“I am so grateful for Hunter’s end of life care and the support we received at home to manage that,” Ella says.
“We did everything that we needed. We made a big nest basically on the floor, with mattresses and doonas, and we just held him for days and days and spoke with him, and Hunter was very peaceful.
“If there is such a thing as a beautiful passing, I think that’s what he had, and we were able to be with him the whole time.”
Sadly, Hunter passed away on November 3, 2014.
It was three years later, still lost in the fog of grief, that Jarrod first mentioned the idea of starting a foundation in Hunter’s name. The idea was to create something that would honour their adored son as well as help other families navigate paediatric palliative care.
And so, the HAS (Hunter Alfred Stratton) Foundation was founded in 2018, providing financial and emotional support to children suffering life-limiting conditions, and their families, through the Palliative Care Service at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
The HAS Foundation’s major fundraising event is the annual SkyCity Mother’s Day luncheon, with money raised going towards the foundation’s programs, including donating to the Laklinyeri Beach House in Victor Harbor.
The beach house is run by the WCH Hospital Foundation and enables families of sick children to make holiday memories together. At this year’s fundraising luncheon, the HAS Foundation donated $50,000 to Laklinyeri, and all up has given $200,000 to the much-needed beach house.
Another vital service offered by the HAS Foundation is its curated care packs, which are donated to families entering the palliative care system.
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“When you first step into palliative care, it can be a harsh process with signing resuscitation forms and things like that,” Ella says. “It was very clinical and very medical and, even though the palliative team were wonderful, I knew that there was maybe a gentler way of doing it.
“So, we came up with the idea of the care packs and started working out what could go into them, what would be practical, useful, as well as nurturing, and what would be fun for the other siblings.”
The packs include a duffle bag (created by One Rundle Trading Co), toys and books for siblings, beauty products for mums, easy-to-prepare food goods, a compendium to keep all those hospital notes, and more.
So far, 265 care packs have been handed out to families, with different packs created for different age groups of children.
“I’m really conscious of what goes into these packs, because I want them to be perfect for the families and to make sure that they just feel so nurtured and understood,” Ella says.
“Even with the baby packs, we include beautiful face washers or a muslin wrap or towels, but if they’re packaged with a beautiful, chubby, healthy, smiling baby on the packaging, we take the packaging off and just put a big bow around them, because we know that those things can be triggering when you’ve got an unwell baby.”
It is through her lived experience with Hunter that Ella has been able to channel her empathy, understanding and heartfelt insight into everything the HAS Foundation undertakes.
That includes the 270 Mother’s Day and Father’s Day gifts that have been delivered to first-year bereaved parents – a thoughtful gift to let them know their grief is recognised and remembered.
Other beneficiaries have included TLC for Kids, an organisation that provides an ambulance service to children in palliative care, which received $134,000 from the Foundation, and more than
500 Christmas gifts which have been delivered to families under the care of the palliative care service.
“They receive a beautiful, big Christmas sack full of goodies, plus a $200 supermarket voucher to help with the excessive costs at Christmas,” Ella says. “Everything we do is about giving the families opportunities to create memories and make moments together.”
Other programs run by the Foundation include Held By HAS, a support network for grieving mums, and the soon-to-be launched Held By HAS for dads, which starts this month.
Overall, in the eight years since it began, the foundation has not only raised awareness of the paediatric palliative care program at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, it has also raised more than $1.7 million.
What began from Ella and Jarrod’s kitchen table is now run from a small office in the city, as the foundation continues to grow in size and scope. The team now includes three part-time staff as well as a team of volunteers.
Underpinning it all is the HAS Foundation motto – “live for the moment, love for a lifetime”.
“We want to help these families make the most of every moment,” Ella says. “One of our big driving forces is raising awareness for families to seek out that help and support. We do understand palliative care means the end of life, but that could be a long way down the track.”
Hunter would have turned 24 this year and Ella says while losing her beautiful boy is something she will never get over, she hopes her family’s story can offer hope to those who find themselves on the palliative care journey.
“We are a family that has lived through the heartbreak and pain, and you don’t ever get over it, but you move forward,” Ella says.
“That’s been a surprise for me. While the items in our care packs are wonderful, it is the meaning behind what we do that has actually given families a lot of hope, which has been lovely to hear.
“Knowing that you are making a difference and having an impact in people’s lives is something that I’m so proud of.
“But most importantly, I’m so proud of Hunter, because he taught me so many things in his short 11 years – about life, about what’s important in life, about little things that can make the biggest difference, and I am utilising everything that he taught me.”
This article first appeared in the June 2026 print issue of SALIFE Magazine.
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