Patients can be admitted to the Inpatient Ward at our hospice to receive specialist care including symptom control, respite care, or end-of-life care. We have responded to the current crisis by more-than-doubling our inpatient bed capacity from 7 to 15 beds to meet the additional demand for our services.

We deliver over 80% of our care in our patients’ homes. Providing care at home means the patient is in a place where they feels comfortable and it minimises the need for external hospital appointments. This work has been all the more crucial during the Covid-19 pandemic, as it ensures that highly vulnerable patients can continue shielding away from hospitals where the risk of infection is much higher. It has also helped relieve pressure on our local NHS hospital and community services.

We provide individual and group Music therapy for children with life-limiting conditions or who are facing the loss of a family member. Music therapy offers emotional and psychological support to children who undergo treatment, hospitalisation or are in remission, or who are experiencing emotional, physical and psychological difficulties.

Through improvising music with instruments and voices, we support the children to create a musical language of their own that helps them to express and reflect on their experiences. Parents, grandparents and guardians are included where possible to support the entire family.

The loss of a sibling or parent can have a profound effect on a child. Many children struggle to express the emotions caused by this loss through words. They need a way of letting out their emotions healthily if they are to heal.

Play Therapy gives the children a way to express their emotions through play. Our Play Therapist uses play techniques such as storytelling, sculpturing, playing with puppets and drawing to help the children to express what they are feeling and, in time, come to terms with their loss.

The loss of a loved one can be one of the most challenging events a person can experience. It can have a profound impact on a person’s physical and mental health. We provide a comprehensive programme of counselling and bereavement support for family members and close friends of patients who have been bereaved. We offer one-to-one counselling, informal weekly support groups - our ‘bereavement cuppas’ - and smaller, closed therapeutic bereavement groups.

Our Occupational Therapy service supports patients with a life-limiting or terminal illness to live their lives as independently as possible and with the best quality of life. We work with the patient to evaluate their needs. We can organise equipment or home adaptations, implement rehabilitation programmes and even assist with more complex issues such as housing needs.

One of the other crucial elements that we look for support for is our core costs. These enable us to pay the salaries of our staff in areas such as Finance, HR and Administration, and contribute towards our bills and overheads.