Prospect Hospice
If you wish to donate to Prospect follow this link http://www.justgiving.com/sophieslegacy1
Each year Prospect Hospice welcomes patients from across the community of Swindon, Marlborough and north Wiltshire who have been diagnosed with a life-limiting illness. We care for patients and their families not on the basis of diagnosis, but on the basis of need, in the belief that each person matters and that every day counts.
Because we recognise the unique nature of every patient’s illness and circumstances, we always approach their care with their individual needs in mind, and our services are shaped to reflect that understanding. For most the first contact that a person referred to Prospect has is with one of our team of mobile, community-based nurses, the Prospect Nurse Specialists.
Our nurses visit patients in their own home, assessing their care needs, offering practical advice and support, and providing an introduction to the wider care the hospice can provide through the journey of a patient’s illness. Listening and responding, and sharing hopes and exploring fears, the Prospect Nurse Specialist is the key link for the patient and family.
Prospect’s patients often choose to access the support available through our Day Hospice, which seeks to encourage well-being, reduce stress and anxiety, and promote self esteem and confidence through a range of therapeutic and social activities. It is also home to the Prospect Café, and brings a chance for patients to meet others, as well as provide a break for their carers.
Whether at home, or in the Day Hospice, patients have access to physiotherapy and occupational therapy, and can take part in complementary therapies, relaxation groups, creative writing and music and art therapy. More practically, patients can review current symptoms with our clinical staff, and seek family and carer support, including welfare advice. They are also able to access our lymphoedema service.
For many of the patients and families we meet, what is important is being at home and at the end of their life they turn to the Hospice to enable that to happen. That is why we launched a new service this year called Prospect@Home bringing the care upon which our reputation has grown to the homes of patients at the end of life.
Prospect skilled and expert nursing care staff can now support patients up to 24 hours a day in the place they most want to be at the end of their lives, at home with those who love them most and surrounded by all that is familiar to them. Our new service complements those we have previously provided to our community.
For other patients, they may become known to the team on our In-patient Unit. Here, they might be admitted initially for a period of respite care (with the respite often supporting both patients and their families), or for an assessment of their need by our clinical team.
Here, too, is where some patients are cared for at the end of their lives. Each of the fourteen beds on the In-patient Unit is in a room with views of our extensive and picturesque gardens, providing a tranquil and highly appropriate setting at this most sensitive time for patients and their loved ones.
It costs more than £4m each year to provide the services we bring to our community, the overwhelming proportion of which we raise ourselves. For almost three decades, the community, through fundraising and volunteering, has demonstrated its appreciation of Prospect Hospice. We are therefore delighted that Sophie’s family and friends have nominated Prospect as one of their two chosen charities.
To find out more information about Prospect Hospice go to www.prospect-hospice.net