Boys will be boys - but when Helen Cooper's five-year-old son Matthew jumped off his bed he suffered a groin injury after landing on one of his toys.

The Launton Primary School pupil is now waiting for an operation at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

"He's a typical boy and when he jumped off his bed he landed very awkwardly on a toy," said Ms Cooper, 28, who lives near Bicester.

"I didn't think too much of it at the time, but then he started to say he was in pain, and I noticed some bruising and a lump near his groin.

"The doctor referred him to the John Radcliffe and they said he would now need day surgery, so we are just waiting for a date.

"I know it's not the most serious thing in the world, and other parents have much more serious things to deal with, but it brought it home to me just how useful a purpose-built children's hospital will be."

Matthew also visited the John Radcliffe's trauma unit when he knocked himself out using a slide.

"He was unconscious and taken to hospital by ambulance," added Ms Cooper. "It gave us a real shock at the time, but fortunately it was nothing serious."

To show her gratitude for the care nursing staff have shown Matthew, the mother-of-four organised a jumble sale and cake stall at Launton village hall.

The event raised £200 for the Oxford Children's Hospital Campaign.

Ms Cooper added: "Every time we have been to the John Radcliffe the nursing care has been superb, and I have been very impressed, so I am delighted that the facilities for children are going to be even better."

Ms Cooper said the fundraising event earlier this year was also a way of saying a belated thank you to staff at Oxford's Radcliffe Infirmary who treated her when she was three, after she fell from a tractor trailer and injured her head.

"I didn't know much about it at the time, but I have been told that I was seriously ill," she said.

Ms Cooper also has three daughters, Shannon, 10, Natalie, eight, and Kayleigh, four, and said her eldest daughter needed an operation at the John Radcliffe on her finger after it became infected when a piece of pizza got lodged in it.

She added: "These all sound like quite minor injuries but they all need treating, and show just how much the new children's hospital will be valued."