To mark Hospice Care Week (7th – 13th October), Pendleside Hospice’s chief executive Helen McVey shines a light on the ‘team behind the team’ which keeps the hospice operational.
“There are so many facets to the team at Pendleside and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank every single person who works together to keep our hospice operational 31 years after it first opened,” says Helen. “I hope this introduction to our various departments showcases what a huge, helpful team we’re lucky to have at the hospice.”
Catering and domestic team – this means meals are freshly prepared for patients every day, allowing the hospice to cater for individual needs and special dietary requirements. The building itself is kept clean by the domestic team, a particularly important role as our patients are very susceptible to infections.
Drivers and maintenance team – the hospice is self-sufficient regarding general maintenance, and our talented team can turn their hand to most things! This means we can undertake work much more cost-efficiently, and the fact they can also drive our two minibuses means we can collect patients and bring them to the hospice when needed.
Fundraising and finance teams – without the support of our fundraising team, we wouldn’t be able to raise the much-needed funds to support the clinical team in the delivery of care services. Our finance team helps us to manage our money effectively and also run the weekly lottery.
Retail team – last year, our network of 10 charity shops made a profit of £285,748 which all went towards providing direct care to our patients and service users.
Reception team – they are the hub of the hospice, ensuring our patients, service users, visitors, contractors and supporters receive a warm welcome to the hospice and are directed to the department that can best support them.
Our army of 450 volunteers – without these volunteers in our clinical areas, shops, gardening, reception, driving, catering, finance and fundraising, we simply couldn’t provide the service we do. Their voluntary work equates to a minimum saving of £448,266 in wages each year, whilst assisting us to provide quality care to the people who need our support.
Clinical team – our doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, counsellors, complementary therapists and psychotherapists provided care to 1,788 service users last year. 1,127 patients and 661 family members/carers received direct support from inpatients, Hospice at Home, day services, outpatients and our dedicated family centre.
Helen continued: “Most importantly, Pendleside costs £4.4million each year to run, and we only receive 22% of our funding from the NHS. This means we have to raise over £3million to keep our services running each year, and we couldn’t do this without the support of our local community.
“In Hospice Care Week especially, we’d like to thank our wider local community, without whom we wouldn’t be able to provide care to the people who need our support.”
To find out more about volunteer opportunities at Pendleside Hospice, please call 01282 440100 or visit https://www.pendleside.org.uk/volunteering