We are thrilled to announce that we have selected St Michael’s Hospice to be our Charity of the Year for 2019, due to a landslide in votes from our team here at Site Equip!
Site Equip have selected St Michael’s Hospice as our Charity of the Year 2019 due to the crucial and indispensable care that they provide. The Hospice enables people with a life limiting illness, their families and carers to attain the highest possible quality of life by providing a choice of specialist care and support. They provide care for patients with an illness where a cure is not possible. These illnesses can vary between Cancer, Renal and Heart Failure, Pulmonary illnesses and Motor Neurone Disease.
St Michael’s Hospice is situated in Basingstoke but covers all of North Hampshire, a population of over 300,000 people. The Hospice offers its support in the form of an in-patient unit, with over 10 private rooms which can host over 200 patients a year, and a community palliative care team for out-patients, where carers visit at the patient’s home, undertaking over 2,600 patient visits last year. While the Hospice does specialise in end of life care, most of the admissions are for symptom control, with as many as 29% leaving to go home again.
Their incentive is to encourage their patients to focus on living rather than the alternative. By taking a holistic approach, St Michael’s Hospice ensure that the patient’s physical, emotional and spiritual needs are met. A lovely statement from Jackie Ridge, the Head of Fundraising for St Michael’s Hospice, expresses how genuinely passionate the team are at the Hospice – “We may not be able to extend the life of our patients – but we can and do provide an environment full of love and support, warmth and friendship, comfort and dignity and also it is lively, homely and full of humour. We believe that no-one should die in pain, alone or in fear in this day and age and we want to reach as many people as possible.”
Another part of the service that St Michael’s Hospice can offer is their day patient services. These are day sessions that run twice a week with social sessions designed to bring patients together and clinical/therapeutic sessions where patients have full access to doctors, nurses and complimentary therapy as well as enjoying activities run by our volunteers such as craft workshops and yoga, with a lunch provided. It is all geared around assisting patients with improving the quality of the life they have left. They also run a motor neurone disease clinic and a prostate cancer survivorship program.
To provide all of these services at St Michael’s Hospice costs around £3.9 million per year with only 20% of that cost funded by the Clinical Commissioning Group, therefore they need to generate around £3.1 million through fundraising, which works out around £59,000 per week! To put the cost into perspective, £5 can provide drugs and oxygen for one patient for one hour, £250 can fund a patient visit by one of the hospice home team, and £480 pays for a patient in their in-patient unit for one day.
Help us start supporting St Michael’s Hospice with a generous donation to our Charity of the Year 2019.
With that in mind, all of us here at Site Equip plan to embark on as many of the fundraising events that St Michael’s Hospice have to offer, including their Big Wheel cycling event, Basingstoke 5K/10K Run, and their Moonlight Walk. We also have several ideas brewing ourselves about what we can do to raise money for this amazing charity!
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