Growing hospice care for Worcestershire
Why we must build a
bigger hospice now
At St Richard’s we believe that everyone who is living with a life-limiting illness and their loved ones should be able to have the free, expert care and support they need to live life to the fullest, as independently as they can, for as long as they can. But each year we know there are hundreds of people in Worcestershire who are not getting the expert end of life care they deserve and this is set to rise sharply.
Currently areas of our hospice building in Worcester are bursting at the seams and we are struggling to respond to the ever-increasing number of patients. With your help, we can build a bigger hospice to better support our current patients and reach the unmet need of thousands of local people in the future, offering the right care and support when they need it most.
The number of people in Worcestershire aged 65+ who are living with an incurable long term condition is projected to rise by 63% over the next 20 years. We currently support more than 3,000 people a year. We anticipate our bigger hospice will enable us to care and support up to 4,000 individuals by 2021/22 – a 25% increase.
Architectural plan of the final build. Associated Architects.
How hospice care
makes a difference Anyone with a condition that is lifelimiting can benefit from hospice care and support. Our care is not just for those living with cancer but increasingly other illnesses such as Motor Neurone Disease (MND), renal failure or respiratory conditions. For many people their family is likely to live further away than in previous generations and they may live alone, feeling isolated and anxious about what the future holds.
As treatment options increase and people live longer with a life-limiting illness they will face a number of challenges. Taking control wherever possible and making decisions about their personal health is important at a time when they can feel powerless. People want to feel normal, and we can support them to learn how to understand and cope with their conditions.
We can offer specialist advice on controlling pain; financial advice on how to manage while someone is not able to work or ways to talk to their children about their illness. We can help someone back from being a patient to a person again, living life to the full right until the moment they die.
Without a bigger hospice there is the potential for many more people to face their illness alone, without the significant benefits that being part of the St Richard’s ‘family’ can bring.
Research has shown that palliative care can increase both the quality of life and how long a patient lives.
St Richard’s is the only organisation in South Worcestershire providing specialist end of life care for adults. Over 90% of people supported by a hospice in 2015 rated their care as excellent or good, outperforming all other care settings.
Hospice care is often appropriate sooner rather than later once someone has been diagnosed with an incurable illness. Early referral allows for better management of a patient’s symptoms and anticipation of potential problems and generally results in improved quality of life for a longer time for both patients and loved ones. For those not receiving appropriate hospice care there can be many consequences.
For example, it can mean that without being supported to understand what happens at the end of life, a family calls an ambulance for a person experiencing breathlessness, leading to them dying in a busy accident and emergency department instead of peacefully at home. It could mean a person dies sooner than they might because essentials like nutrition and mobility weren’t given the priority required.
How will a bigger hospice
benefit patients and families? A bigger hospice, a widespread redevelopment of the current building and a focus on more flexible, seven day a week care and support will mean we can reach more people in ways they want, helping them to come to terms with their illness and its impact on their lives.
A life-limiting illness also affects the whole family, many of whom are carers. We offer them time to discuss their concerns as well as practical and financial advice both during a person’s illness and into bereavement. More space will mean we can support more families and carers when they need us.
Bigger, multi-purpose spaces will allow us to offer a wider choice of activities to help people manage their illness where appropriate, such as sessions to cope with breathlessness and fatigue; exercise-based groups and creative and music therapies which can increase confidence and independence; bring relief from symptoms; reduce stress, anxiety and depression as well as improve sleep.
The new St Richard’s will also offer warm and welcoming social spaces for all ages as well as cosy areas suitable for a confidential chat. These areas will be used for a wide range of less formal support for patients and their loved ones, such as drop in sessions, social groups and day-to-day support of friends and families.
“
Coming here, talking to people and realising you are not alone is incredibly important. Having a warm, homely and calm space where we can sit and talk will help me feel better.
”
With our new, expanded building we’ll be able to support people from the point they are diagnosed, improving their quality of life and offering support to their family.
Your new hospice
will offer: Larger rooms suitable for exercise based groups eg adapted Tai Chi, yoga, strength and balance. Specialist exercise studio with programmes designed by our Physiotherapists. A kitchen where our Occupational Therapists will help patients learn how to improve day-to-day living at home to encourage independence. Counselling rooms for supporting more patients and loved ones. Rooms for supporting more carers: we offer them time to discuss their concerns as well as practical and financial advice both during a person’s illness and into bereavement. More space will mean we can support more families and carers when they need us.
“
Day hospice is my extended family, being there to comfort, console but also allow me to enjoy my time there and have a laugh with the staff, volunteers and other patients. It seems that fixing worries and concerns so you can get on with living is their speciality.
Open art studio – for patients and loved ones to express feelings through creativity. Complementary therapy rooms for treatments including reflexology and aromatherapy massage. Music and horticultural therapy spaces where patients and families can benefit from the therapeutic impact on their health and wellbeing. Spacious social and eating area – will be at the heart of the hospice building, offering a comfortable place for patients, families, groups and volunteers to meet, chat and support each other. This will be a light, calm and tranquil environment. A re-configured homely, light, reception area where you will be greeted with a warm, understanding, welcome.
Illustration of the planned light and spacious social space. Associated Architects.
How much
When will
Expanding St Richard’s Hospice to support more people will cost in excess of £5.3m. An extremely generous and unexpected £2m gift in a Will, along with carefully saved hospice reserve funds and pledges from Trusts and grant making foundations has given us a great start. We are appealing to you to help us reach our goal of welcoming more patients and their loved ones to our bigger hospice by 2020.
We started work in late 2017. With your support, we aim to carry out the work in stages dependent on funding and to ensure continuing patient care. We aim to fully open the bigger hospice in 2020.
will it cost?
We do not anticipate receiving any government funding for this project and are dependent on donations to ensure we can grow our care in Worcestershire.
building start?
“
I am actually doing something to keep well. That feels really good in the situation where cancer makes you feel very powerless because it’s out of your control. Here is something, albeit small, but to me it’s big: I can walk, I can make my heart rate increase, I can strengthen my limbs as much as I’m able.
Key facts: St Richard’s currently cares for 3,087 patients, family members, loved ones and the bereaved. The number of people we support has increased by 39% in the last seven years. One in five people in the UK has an unmet need for expert end of life care It is estimated that there are currently at least 6,000 people aged 65 or over living with cancer in Worcestershire. St Richard’s has supported over 23,000 people since 2010 – that’s enough to fill Worcester Warriors’ Sixways stadium twice! St Richard’s does not receive funding from national cancer charities such as Macmillan or Cancer Research UK.
Our history
It is only thanks to the support of our community that we have grown to care for so many in Worcestershire. Their unstinting generosity raises over three quarters of the funds we need each year to continue our care, with the remainder from the NHS. St Richard’s is part of the community, funded by the community and supported by almost 1,000 dedicated volunteers.
1984 St Richard’s began in a Droitwich home 1991
1985
Moved to Rose Hill in Worcester, and services expand. Officially opened by Diana, Princess of Wales.
Moved to a terraced house in Castle Street, Worcester
2011
2006
Snowdrop Centre opens to support more families
First patients in new hospice in Wildwood Drive
2014 Expanded and redeveloped In-patient Unit opens with more single bedrooms
2018 Build 2020 appeal launched
Officially opened by HRH The Duke of Kent
With your support we can look forward to the next decade of supporting our community.
So much more than
“
just a building...
A bigger hospice will give us room to be more responsive to an individual’s needs. At the moment patients may have to queue to go into the nurses’ room for a private conversation they don’t want to have in a crowded room. Sometimes we have as many as half our patients arrive in wheelchairs and we are so cramped for space that it can be difficult for them to move around easily and independently. Day Hospice Nurse
Ray Mace, living with
heart failure and Parkinson’s When I was told the news I was particularly miserable and fed up and when somebody suggested coming to St Richard’s I thought, how long have I got then? People saw it as a one-way door in and no one going out. I was going into decline, staying at home, finding it difficult even to watch the television anymore. When kind people came round to see me they asked questions about my illness all the time - how long have they given you? Will you go bald? Coming here was an escape from that. I liken the hospice to a rest place for weary travellers.
There’s none of us exempt from dying, we know we’ve all got to face it in some way, and what the hospice has given me, is the strength to realise it’s still worthwhile trying to enjoy life. St Richard’s has also given me time to think, what do I want out of life, what do I want to do and can I do it? One key thing I have gained from St Richard’s is the realisation that life doesn’t end tomorrow. Coming to here, talking to people, realising that you’re not alone and that people know what you’re talking about – if St Richard’s can take that to the thousands that are going to need help, it will work even more wonders.
Jackie Pickford, lives with the progressive illness Multiple Systems Atrophy (MSA). Jackie attends a regular hospice outpatient clinic, tai chi sessions, and has complementary therapy to help her condition. She has also had a short stay in the St Richard’s In-patient Unit to improve her symptoms. Jackie explained, “When I’m at St Richard’s I’m treated as a human being, not as someone being processed. I find the tai chi very relaxing and it improves my movement. It’s easy to do and gives me the skills to help manage my own condition. In our group we have people with different conditions, capabilities and needs, sharing a common enjoyment of doing something physical we probably wouldn’t be doing otherwise. “My reflexology sessions were relaxing and I now have aromatherapy massages
to help relieve pain. For me it’s also about the camaraderie, and knowing you are not on your own. It’s a place where it’s normal to have issues but you don’t have to talk about them or feel the need to do so. It’s fun and light-hearted as well as being extremely useful as staff talk to each other so my care is co-ordinated.” Jackie’s husband, Ian added, “When we told some of our friends that Jackie was having hospice support a number of them said, ‘I didn’t know Jackie was that ill.’ They thought hospices are places to go when nothing else can be done, but that’s not the case. Hospice care for us is about life improvement, not life end. It’s having fun, staying fit, learning skills to help self-manage your condition and enjoying life.”
The couple, who have been together for 30 years, do as much as they can despite Jackie’s illness. They regularly travel and Jackie takes her all-terrain wheelchair all over the world, anywhere where Ian can push. Recent trips have included Russia, France, Germany and previously Myanmar where Jackie and her wheelchair were transported in a longboat.
“There are many thousands who would really benefit from being supported by the hospice to live and enjoy the life they have. Some people need it now, and for those that don’t need it now, you really want to know the care will be there for you, your family and friends in the future. That’s why we are very much in favour of the community getting together to raise funds for Build 2020.”
“We’ve been incredibly impressed with the care and support of St Richard’s. The impact is way beyond the care and time you spend at the hospice: it permeates through the rest of the week, making life easier. “Jackie’s care is flexible and suits her needs. She gets exhausted so a full day at the traditional Day Hospice would be too long, but coming in to different sessions is better for her and our way of life. “If the hospice expands there will be more space to care for more people with a wide range of illnesses. Jackie and Ian do as much as they can despite Jackie’s illness
St Richard’s - here for you All our services are free. The St Richard’s Hospice Community Nursing Team – offering expert advisory and practical care for patients in their own homes and other settings.
The Family Support Team – offers support including counselling, social work and citizen’s advice. Pre and post bereavement support. Education – sharing expertise to enhance patient care.
The In-patient Unit – a dedicated and skilled team on hand 24 hours a day to manage patient symptoms and where, if appropriate, patients may spend their last days. Day Hospice – giving high-dependency patients medical and nursing support, along with care and the chance to socialise. Living Well courses for people with a life-limiting illness to help them learn new skills, strategies and techniques to manage symptoms through education, exercise, therapies, creativity, relaxation and group support.
Volunteers from our community give their time in a wide variety of ways to help the hospice.
How you can help Please donate online at www.strichards.org.uk/build2020 If you wish to make a donation by card over the phone then please call the Fundraising Team on 01905 763963 or fill in the form below to pay by cheque. Your donation is vital to make this project a success.
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Growing hospice care for Worcestershire
St Richard’s Hospice, Wildwood Drive, Worcester WR5 2QT www.strichards.org.uk Registered charity no. 515668. Registered company no. 01850502.