Over the past few weeks we've been supporting Joseph Lillywhite and his family as they face the biggest challenge of their lives.

Joseph is only 5 years old and in January 2013 he was diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma after being slightly unwell for a few weeks with a virus. The Lillywhite's received this devastating news after taking Joseph to A&E after several visits to their GP. Joseph's mum Helen explained, "words cannot describe the complete and utter devastation of finding out that our precious child has been diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a rare and very aggressive childhood cancer".

The tumour has grown around Joseph's kidney and there was cancer evident in his bone marrow, hips and thighs. Joseph is currently receiving frontline treatment at the Leeds General Infirmary from a fantastic team to whom we are extremely grateful, however, Neuroblastoma is a very aggressive childhood cancer. We know that it causes 15% of childhood cancer deaths and that two children are diagnosed every week in the UK. Unfortunately, long-term survival for children with high-risk neuroblastoma is less than half the average rate for other childhood cancers and relapse rates are high. There's been a groundswell of local support for the Lillywhite family including lots of offers to help raise funds for Joseph and so the family has decided to support the Neuroblastoma Alliance UK because they will help if Joseph can’t join the UK trials, or if they need a clinical treatment that is only available abroad.

If you'd like to support Joseph you can either donate by visiting: http://www.justgiving.com/josephlillywhite or like Joseph's page on facebook.com/josephlillywhite