The Marie Curie Hospice, West Midlands offers specialist care for people with cancer and other life-limiting illnesses and support for families, completely free.His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, Patron of Marie Curie Cancer Care officially opened the new £20 million hospice on 21 June 2013.
All the money raised from the Tommy Godwin Challenge will be going towards funding our Marie Curie Hospice, West Midlands. The hospice is here for people living with any terminal illness, and their families. We offer expert care, guidance and support to help them get the most from the time they have left.
Last year the hospice cared for 479 in-patients and 1,122 used our day care for treatments and alternative therapies. The hospice has 24 private bedrooms, all with en-suite wet rooms, piped oxygen and double doors offering direct access to landscaped gardens where 2,000 trees have been planted. Our in-patient facilities enable patients to make the most of the time they have left in comfort with expert care on hand 24 hours a day. The West Midlands Hospice also provides an adult and specialist child bereavement service for those loved ones of the patients affected by what the family are going through.
Our day hospice provides patients with a range of therapies, from clinical to alternative such as reflexology and specialist clinics to help patients and their families deal with some of the symptoms of their illness. Day patients can also take advantage of the other activities on offer such as art classes and gardening in the beautiful gardens or indoor greenhouse.
We are here to look after every aspect of the patient, from their physical to emotional and spiritual wellbeing and to make sure they and their families are supported in every way possible at this difficult time in their lives. Many families say to us that they simply could not have coped had it not been for the Hospice being there for them. It costs £400 for someone to stay in the Marie Curie Hospice for 24 hours, which is why your contribution is so valuable to us. Find out more.
For 2022 we are particularly keen to continue fundraising. Here's why:-
The coronavirus pandemic brought about the most difficult year for the charity sector in a generation. Marie Curie Nurses and other health care professionals stepped up delivering care to the most vulnerable. Despite challenges to fundraising, the charity launched several new services (telephone bereavement service and a national telephone befriending chatline ‘Check in and Chat’) to support people affected by death, dying and bereavement. We adapted our services in order to support people with Covid and to keep all our patients, their loved ones, staff and volunteers safe. Additionally, we continue to campaign for people across the UK living with a terminal illness, their loved ones and for those affected by bereavement.
In the past year, Marie Curie provided direct care to 69,000 people which is a 15% increase on the year before. Alongside our Nurses caring for people in their homes and in our hospices, our Nurses and Support Line Officers also offered guidance over the phone and via webchats to people up and down the UK.
This year some areas of fundraising income dropped considerably. Due to national guidelines, we were unable to conduct planned face-to-face fundraising and had to close our shops during national lockdowns - volunteer Community Fundraising and events were also curtailed. Although the hospice sector did receive grants from the UK Government, and were able to use the furlough scheme, the closures across fundraising and retail reduced income by £24 million overall compared the previous year.
The population is ageing and it is estimated that by 2040 there will be 100,000 more people dying each year in the UK, increasing the demand for palliative and end of life care, so we continue to campaign for the Government to develop a more sustainable funding model for end of life care.
Locally at the Hospice, we launched our ‘Hospice at Home’ service in 2021 which enables us to provide the same care that we do at the Hospice, in people’s homes instead. As we had visiting restrictions at the Hospice during the pandemic and we found more people wanted to stay at home rather than come into the building to receive care, we found that our Hospice at Home service reached a lot more people than we could by providing care alone within the building. The Hospice at Home service supports Solihull and parts of Birmingham.