Support Weston Hospicecare This September and Cast Your Vote for Them in Our Charity Poll

Weston Hospicecare provides expert and compassionate care to people in Weston-super-Mare, North Somerset and Sedgemoor to people suffering from life-limiting illnesses.Their mission is to relieve pain and suffering in adults, not just those who are ill but their families too, in order to maximise quality of life towards the end of life. In order to do this, they do everything we can to support the physical, mental, spiritual and emotional needs of their patients and their families. The charity also ensures they stay connected to families during and post-bereavement to offer a helping hand wherever-needed.

About Weston Hospicecare

The charity consists of a 10-bed inpatient unit, a team of 10 community nurses who cover more than 23,000 miles in North Somerset every year, a day hospice service where patients who are well enough to live at home can visit for expert care, a family support team and patients can also make use of physio and complementary therapists who are based on-site but can deliver sessions in the homes of patients.

Each year, approximately 1,000 patients are cared for across all services. The Family Support Team gives support to another 1,000 family members. Weston Hospicecare is based at Jackson-Barstow House in Uphill and its services cover patients and their families in Burnham-on-Sea, Wedmore, Cheddar, Blagdon,  Langford, Winscombe, Banwell, Congresbury, Yatton, Clevedon, Worle, Weston-super-Mare and everywhere in between.

The hospice relies on the kindness of 700 volunteers whose time alone is typically thought to be worth £1million each year. Their actual contribution is worth a lot more. Volunteers help in shops, support the fundraising team to put on major events and they also heavily-support the clinical team too with hosting bereavement groups, being a companion, providing practical support to patients using, and staff from, the inpatient unit team and the day hospice team.

The hospice started in Weston-super-Mare in 1989 after the community and medical professionals discovered a need to treat people at the end of their lives. The hospice moved to Jackson-Barstow House in the early 2000s after a large financial gift was left enabling the charity to buy the premises.

It costs more than £4.2million each year to support core costs of the hospice with just 20% coming from the government. This means hospice supporters must collectively raise more than £3.3million a year (£11,000 per day or £7.64 a minute) to cover the remaining 80%.

Without the Generosity of Weston Hospicecare Supporters and Volunteers, the Charity Would Not Exist.

While there has been some well-documented additional support for all hospices across the UK, at Weston Hospicecare the impact of the coronavirus has been huge. Closure of shops and postponement of key fundraising events have led to huge losses.

The hospice supporter base have superbly-embraced a series of virtual fundraising events which have raised in excess of £25,000. As of July 2020, some of their charity shops have started to trade again and some fundraising events will be taking place in September.

To make a kind donation to support Weston Hospicecare, visit their website here.