Shop volunteer champions her local hospice while raising vital income

While serving customers at three of the charity’s shops Sally often seizes the opportunity to tell them all about ellenor’s palliative care, Wellbeing services and Hospice Care @ Home.

Despite her own cancer diagnosis in 2016, the 56-year-old grandmother from Dartford has remained dedicated to her volunteer work at ellenor. Her resilience is inspiring.

She said: “I work with a variety of volunteers at three different shops, and we all have the same goal and share a sense of achievement. We are all singing the same song and it’s a great atmosphere. I will keep doing it until my body says enough is enough.”

This year’s Hospice Care Week (October 7-13) focusses on retail and the role it has in funding valuable services. Sally is a prime example of how volunteers are the backbone of the shops, integrating with the community, attracting financial support and promoting ellenor at every opportunity.

She said: “It gives me a sense of purpose. Customers ask how I am doing, and I ask how they are doing -- it’s great. I also love to spread the word about ellenor, and having a serious illness myself means I totally get it.”

ellenor is dedicated to enriching the lives of adults and children in North Kent and Bexley who are facing all types of life-limiting illnesses.

For adults, the charity has a range of essential services including an Inpatient Ward, Hospice Care @ Home, Care Home Support Team and Wellbeing Services. For children in Dartford, Gravesham, Swanley, and Bexley, there is clinical nursing often in their own homes.

Sally said: “Once I started volunteering and saw behind the scenes, I really saw what an amazing charity ellenor is. A lot of people think you just go into a hospice for end-of-life care, but ellenor is so much more and deserves all the support it can get including government funding.”

Sally is still battling a rare form of ovarian cancer and having regular treatment with a new drug at The Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton.

She said: “I lost both my nan and my mum to cancer, and my mother-in-law. I have always been around it, and I must remain positive. I need to get out of the house and remember there are always people worse off than me.”

Sally has been married to John, 60, for 36 years and they have two children, Steven and Natalie, and two grandchildren. She started volunteering at ellenor’s Dartford High Street shop in 2014. A few years ago, she also began helping at the Dartford Priory shop and is now sometimes called on to lend a hand at Special Treats in Darent Valley Hospital.

She said: “The clientele at each of the Dartford shops is very different. At Dartford Priory we also sell furniture, so we have a lot of people coming in wanting a bargain. I like to tell them about ellenor and what it does and how important the money is.

“Sometimes it’s not until you speak to customers and explain what ellenor is and what it does that you can see their mind swerving. They start to understand what ellenor means to the community and what it’s all about. Talking to customers about what goes on behind the scenes really can open their eyes. I think it’s important to get the message out there.”

Sally had never worked in retail before she started volunteering for ellenor, but she took to her new role like a duck to water. Her previous job as a caretaker at The Brent Primary School, Dartford, had given her an excellent grounding in communication. She also worked closely with the parents and their children as a lollipop lady before ill health prompted her to take early retirement.

She said: “I didn’t know anything about ellenor until my mum passed away in January 2000. In her will she expressly asked for her possessions, her clothes and furniture and such like, to be donated to ellenor. A couple of weeks after the ellenor guys came to collect it all, I had a phone call from the charity. They wanted to check that I was okay, which I thought was really good of them. The children were too young for me to volunteer back then, but I was always going into the ellenor shop. In 2014 the children were older and had their own lives, so I started volunteering then.”

Sally’s initial cancer diagnosis in 2016 meant an operation and treatment. She was in remission for several years until the difficult news came in 2019 that the disease had returned and this time it was incurable.

She said: “They were talking about palliative care and that was when I was thinking I would be turning to ellenor myself for support. Then I was sent to The Royal Marsden in Sutton, a leading cancer hospital which trials new drugs and treatments. I have intravenous infusions every three weeks and a chemotherapy tablet every day and scans every eight weeks. I must remain positive, and I don’t show any outward signs of having cancer, so people are often surprised to find out I have it.

“I look forward to going into the shops and ellenor treats us volunteers well, holding little get togethers a few times each year, like the summer party we had this June. They realise how well the volunteers help run the shops and they care about our wellbeing. When my mother-in-law died four years ago, they phoned to check I was okay. It’s little touches like that – it’s so nice to think that people care.”