Local charity Hospice at Home West Cumbria are expanding their services by introducing a new Support at Home Service, which will be launched this month.
The aim of the Support at Home Service is to provide essential daily care and support for patients who have been diagnosed with a life limiting illness.
This will, where possible, help to facilitate discharge and prevent hospital admission to allow patients to remain in their own homes as their journey progresses and they approach the end of their life.
The new service will merge with the existing Home Nursing Service who deliver overnight and respite care to support patients and their loved ones.
Stella Walsh, the new Support at Home Service Lead has been working with community health care professionals to shape and develop the service, ensuring Hospice at Home West Cumbria are building something which meets the needs of the local communities.
Stella said: “I’ve always been passionate about providing the best possible service for anyone involved with Hospice at Home West Cumbria, whether that’s a supporter, a volunteer, a family member or a patient.
“I have been working to develop a service that centres around our value of delivering excellent patient care. We’ve recruited a fantastic team of Healthcare Assistants to get the service started and I am really excited to see things grow and develop.”
A key element of the Support at Home Service is to ‘find the person in the patient’ and allow them to lead on their own holistic care and maintain a level of independence and control in their own home.
The Support at Home Service is available to patients with a palliative diagnosis who are eligible to receive continuing health care funding to support their needs. Referrals into the service will be limited initially, allowing time for the service to expand and meet demands across West Cumbria.
Rachael McAllister, Home Nursing Services Team Leader for Hospice at Home West Cumbria added:
“We are incredibly grateful for the exceptional grant we received through the Bedrock Foundation enabling us to launch this fantastic new service.
“We’d also like to say a huge thank you to our new Vice President, Gary McKee, whose phenomenal fundraising effort last year is also supporting us to launch this new service, which we hope to develop and grow across West Cumbria.”
