Caring for the Community with Hospice UK
Hospice UK is a collection of hospices providing support and care to individuals of all ages. Whether they need patient care, counselling or family support groups, Hospice UK is there to lend a helping hand.
We partnered with Hospice UK back in 2017 after being chosen by our very own Joules team, and we’re so pleased to continue our support of them for our first Charity Month.
What is Hospice UK?
Hospice UK is the national charity for hospice and palliative care. They work to ensure all adults and children living with a terminal or life-shortening illness receive the care and support they need, when they need it. They bring life to days, when days are limited.
Hospice UK’s mission is to transform the way society cares for the dying and those around them. To empower individuals, communities and populations to embrace the ethos of hospice care and extend its breadth and reach to improve everyone’s experience of death, dying and bereavement. Their work is hugely important to those who need to access hospice care and their loved ones. Collectively, hospices across the UK need to raise over £1billion a year from fundraising activities to stay open.
Hospice Care Week – 7th-13th October
Hospice Care Week is an annual week of activity to raise the profile of hospice care across the UK. Each year Hospice UK hold a week of celebration and action, which helps to change people’s perceptions of hospice care. When people think of “hospice”, they tend to think of nurses. And if they think of “hospice funding” they probably think about sky dives or marathons. All of this is true, but it’s far from the whole picture. Hospice care needs a lot more people, skills, and resources to take place, and needs more than just the odd fun run to fund it. The theme of Hospice Care Week 2019 is ’This is what it takes’ and the goal is to take a more informative look at hospice care.
Charity Facts
Hospice UK supports over 210 hospices across the UK, who collectively look after over 220,000 patients a year.
A hospice isn’t just a building. 159,000 patients are seen by the charity’s doctors, nurses and therapists in their own homes each year.
Every year, around 49,000 people accessed bereavement support through hospices.
How has Joules helped Hospice UK?
Joules have supported Hospice UK to fund our core work to help support over 200 hospices across the UK. We have helped Hospice UK increase their presence on the high street and reach new audiences. Our team has also supported hospices directly with volunteering at their local events, through promotion in stores and also stock donations to the local hospice shop.
Last year we raised over £10,000 for Hospice UK, and are excited to hopefully smash this target for our Charity Month this October!
The team at Joules are just so supportive. We really enjoy working with them to come up with new ideas or see what the next engagement opportunity is. Their customers are incredibly supportive too! It is great to be a part of the community they have created and to go into stores to see the amazing, innovative fundraising taking place! It is really easy to see, when you meet anyone who works for Joules, that they really believe in the brand and what the organisation is achieving – it makes partnering with Joules so enjoyable and we so excited to continue our work with them.
Victoria Linney, Corporate Partnerships Executive at Hospice UK
How could your donation help Hospice UK?
£5 could fund twenty minutes for a family in need to talk with a hospice nurse or bereavement counsellor.
£10 could pay for a home-cooked meal for a patient, with all the trimmings, served just the way they like it.
£20 could pay for memory boxes to help children and their families capture precious memories.
£50 could provide one hour of Hospice UK’s Practice Lead’s time supporting nurses in hospices to be resilient and build their skills.
£70 could pay for the cost of a day’s mileage for a hospice nurse visiting families in their own homes.
£200 could provide a day of support from our expert Information Specialist, answering vital queries about hospice care from staff and the general public.
Skylar’s Story:
Couple Sue and Duncan, from Stevenage, felt overwhelmed when they were told six-week-old Skylar had a rare condition called dystonia. However, Keech Hospice Care has made the family feel safe and supported again.
For the first six weeks of her life, Skylar was a happy baby with a beaming smile. Then, last March she started projectile vomiting and we noticed her eyes kept moving to the left. She had a terrifying 45-minute seizure. Skylar was put into intensive care where a scan showed she had had a bleed that was putting pressure on her brain. We were devastated, and had the terrifying thought that she was going to die.
Skylar was diagnosed with dystonia, a rare condition causing uncontrolled muscle cramps and spasms as well as body twisting and tremors. Her sight has also deteriorated over time so she is now blind.
We were introduced to Keech Hospice Care in April last year. We went to the hospice for the first time and were just blown away. The doctors and nurses were brilliant. Skylar had been in pain for months. Very quickly, the team changed her medication and, within a few hours, the transformation was amazing.
We were offered a stay at the children’s unit so the team could manage Skylar’s pain. We didn’t feel we could leave our baby completely so we stayed in the family accommodation. We were so tired; it was fantastic – we had 100% trust in those looking after Skylar with the comfort of being close by.
If we hadn’t gone to Keech, Skylar would still be in pain now and that thought is unbearable.
Would you like to offer your support to our fantastic charities? Visit our Virgin Money Giving page or head into store to see what’s going on. Keep up-to-date with our efforts by using #JoulesCharityMonth
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