Hospice at Home - how Severn Hospice home-care keeps patients where they are comfortable

The nursing and social care is provided by the charity's Hospice at Home team - who cover the entire of the giant county of Shropshire, as well as significant parts of mid Wales, priding themselves on delivering the highest quality of support. 

The team, which works alongside the county's GPs and a host of other health and support workers, is dedicated to providing people with day and night care in their own home.

It is also responsible for running the charity's 'virtual hospice', providing people with ward-equivalent care in their own homes.

The Hospice at Home service generally supports patients who are in the last six weeks of their illness to die at home, free from pain and surrounded by their family and friends.

The team at the charity is made up of more than 50 people.

Sarah Hill, a Hospice at Home nurse practitioner, said: "The day and night service is for people in the last six weeks of life whose preference is to be at home for care, or to die at home."

Lynn Davies, a virtual hospice practitioner who has been part of Severn Hospice for 20 years, said the team is always balancing the best ways to help people remain at home - well aware of the apprehension some families have about inviting people into their homes, particularly at such a sensitive time.

She said: "We try and work it out around what is best for the family, because it can be quite invasive having lots of people coming in and out of your home, especially when you have a lot of things to process."

Michelle Knott, a care co-ordinator for the team, said the awareness of the situations patients are coping with is never lost on them.

She also spoke of the benefits in providing care in an environment which people are familiar and comfortable with.

She said: "It is a privilege to go into someone's home when they are so vulnerable - and it is the wider family as well, we don't just support the patient, we do try and support the family a huge amount."

She added: "I think it really is a privilege to go into someone's home, into their space.

"You can make a connection much easier too - you can look at a photo, strike a conversation up, perhaps see the grandchildren running around."

Lynn explained that the number of people wanting care at home is rising, with four out of five of the hospice's 3,000-plus patients a year now looked after at home.

With the hospice having eight in-patient beds at Bicton and 11 at Apley, it shows how the community services are at the heart of how it helps its patients.

Lynn said: "The number of people is increasing, I think we have to look at what people want. Not everyone can come in, not everyone wants to come in, so it is finding how we can work with more people."

All three speak about their awareness of the importance of their work and what it means to be allowed to help people in their own homes at the most vulnerable times.

Michelle said: "Giving that care is allowing that person to be a wife, not a carer - to be a daughter, not a carer, and giving them the reassurance that their loved one is being looked after."

Lynn added: "It is also about respecting and not taking over because some people feel 'why are you here, I can look after my wife or husband' so it is a fine line between going in and doing it on a hospice ward."

Sarah said: "For some of these people it is a new experience. The family member perhaps has not looked after someone who is dying so having a service you can lean on, not always in their own homes but on the end of the telephone offering that support is really important."

To learn more about how you can support Severn Hospice's work, visit severnhospice.org.uk/support-us or call 01743 236565.