Hospice@Home to go 24/7

East Cheshire Hospice’s highly successful Hospice@Home service is being extended, on April 1, to provide round-the-clock care to local patients.

As a result, the dedicated and highly-valued Hospice@Home nursing team will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, to provide vital care and support to patients in East Cheshire who are in the final three months of life.

Hospice’s Chief Executive, Karyn Johnston hopes that this will provide a sustainable model of specialist social care, with potential to inform other elements of social care provision, outside of the end-of-life area. The new provision has been made possible thanks to the generous support from key donors in the area.

First launched in 2018, Hospice @Home currently provides dedicated and compassionate care for people in the last few weeks of life, who are able to have their symptoms managed at home. As part of the first phase of this service, nurses were on call in the evenings, during the night, and all weekend and bank holidays, at times when other support services may not be readily available.

Almost 1,000 patients and their families have been supported by the service, with many more expected to benefit thanks to the extension of this important provision.

On a visit to the Hospice local MP, David Rutley, met new nurses  training to participate in the Hospice @Home service, and thanked them warmly for their important work.

He also met with the women who run the Wilmslow Girls Crafts for Charity who have raised almost £3,500 last year for the Hospice. 

The Hospice annual Christmas Tree Collection, in which volunteers collect local residents’ Christmas trees for a suggested donation, was another great success. Over £140,000 was raised, thanks to the generosity of residents, which will be used to further support this important organisation’s vital work in local communities.

Speaking after his visit, Mr Rutley said, “East Cheshire Hospice’s Hospice @Home programme has had a transformative effect on care provision in our area, making dedicated and compassionate support more readily available to local patients and their families at a crucial time. I am delighted that this provision is being extended and will now be there round-the-clock for those who need it. I am very grateful to those who have given generously to make this possible, as well as the wonderful nursing team and the entire staff at the Hospice. Their work in local communities with our much-valued Hospice is inspiring, and I look forward to the launch of the service in April.”