Politicians visit hospices for Hospice Care Week

This year for Hospice Care Week we’re focusing on sharing the range of work that hospices do and celebrating the amazing staff and volunteers that make up hospice care.  

Hospices rely on vital local support from the communities around them, including the politicians who represent them. As part of Hospice Care Week this year, we’ve been helping hospices engage with their local representative, showing them round hospices and helping them get a better understanding of how the hospices supports people at the end of their lives, and their loved ones.  

Vicky Ford MP visited her local hospice in Essex, Farleigh Hospice.  

“We are so lucky to have Farleigh” 

“People described it as a home from home and could not have been more full of praise for the staff and volunteers” 

Farleigh Hospice has ten inpatient rooms, community teams that support people across mid Essex and over 500 people across the community. 

Most of the people they support are in the last twelve weeks of their lives, some in the last year, and occasionally they support people with longer limiting conditions at particular stages when they need additional medical care. 

“We talked a lot about the importance of families being able to have time together to and to make decisions together in these last weeks and days.” 

“Today brought back memories of my own mother who died at home last autumn. It was a sad time but I and other family members know she was at peace and well care for. She wanted to be at home.” 

Hospices support more than 300,000 people every year. But the need for hospice care is growing. There aren’t enough people to fill the roles we need to look after dying patients and their families. Without people to fill these empty roles, hospices will struggle to keep providing the gold-standard end-of-life care everyone deserves. 

“The Farleigh team explained that by 2040 there will be a 40% increase in the number of people need end of life care. We discussed the importance of making sure that people know it is ok to die at home, if that is the right place for them and making sure that over the coming years there is an increase in trained healthcare workers from many different disciplines to help support them.” 

We know that hospice staff find it to be the most rewarding and satisfying job of their career. And hospice care is not only the incredible inpatient care delivered by clinical staff, its made up of bereavement counsellors, fundraisers, catering staff, and everyone else who works and volunteers at a hospice. 

“I spent a very moving few hours at the Farleigh Hospice, talking with some of people they are caring for, their families, staff, volunteers and fundraisers. I saw gardens beautifully maintained and cared for by volunteers and I chatted with some of the very passionate fundraising team who explained the incredible range of activities and events they put on to raise money for the service, including skydives, fun runs and bucket shaking.” 

Hospice staff and volunteers make hospice care what it is. That’s why, this Hospice Care Week, we’re supporting hospices to celebrate them. 

This year, Hospice Care Week will run from 9 - 15 October 2023, but MPs across the country will be visiting their local hospice throughout the autumn, to meet and celebrate the amazing staff and volunteers who make hospice care so special.