Severn Hospice: Treasured charity that has kept on offering its support
You only have to listen to the families supported by Severn Hospice to understand what it means – for many it’s help that comes at the most difficult time of their lives.
While many jobs and services have changed or stopped since the advent of the Covid crisis, for the hospice that was simply not an option.
Throughout the past 12 months the charity’s nurses have been in people’s homes, providing comfort and support to those who need it most, or at the hospice’s Shrewsbury and Telford sites making sure patients still get the same care and attention they always have.
After a year of facing the added challenges of Covid, the charity’s chief executive Heather Tudor has spoken of her admiration for the way her staff have faced up to the difficulties, and revealed her own worries as the pandemic gradually engulfed the country.
The last year has seen the charity help about 3,000 people, and Mrs Tudor explained: “Our focus throughout has been on maintaining services to a very vulnerable patient group and we are very proud that we have managed to do that, although operationally it has been very challenging.”
The hospice has had to change the way its staff work with the introduction of PPE; it has faced the difficulty of suspending admissions at one site after a Covid outbreak, and all while its ability to raise funds has been devastated by lockdown and distancing rules. Mrs Tudor said the focus had always been on how to care for their patients within the extra challenges posed by the restrictions
She said: “The most difficult thing is making sure we do not lose our services, but also making sure we do it in a very safe way for our patients and staff. That has been very difficult but we have got there and we have not been closed throughout the past year.
“Just because there is a pandemic does not mean our patients are not out there needing our support – if anything they probably need it even more so.”
Mrs Tudor said that the outbreak which closed a ward at its Telford site in January had proved a major challenge – but had shown the importance of developing its community services, where nurses go into people’s homes to provide care.
She said: “Like many organisations we experienced an outbreak and we just had a surge of cases at that time. It was largely our staff so we had no choice to close the ward. It was only a week but that was significant.
“What was really fortunate was that in those circumstances our community services, that we have worked very hard on, we could support people at our Shrewsbury site or at home.”
Mrs Tudor said her concern had been making sure that the patients did not see any drop in the level of care they received.
She said: “There was the fear of not being able to deliver safe care, so rather than trying to keep the ward open with very few staff it worked better to look after patients at home. We have fought very hard to keep the same level of service in the community and our staff do a wonderful job.”
While the hospice has lost about £100,000 a week in fundraising due to the pandemic, there have still been heart-warming efforts from people across the county to support the charity.
One of those was eight-year-old Imogen Leith, known as Immy, who set out to raise money for the hospice after it cared for her mum Kerry, who died last June.
Immy persuaded her dad Richard, 42, that she would walk the distance from John o’Groats to Land's End - some 874 miles - ticking off the distance bit by bit.
After her efforts captured the hearts of the public her fundraiser ended up topping £20,000 in February.
Speaking as the total ticked over £20,000, her father Richard, gave an emotional account of the difference the hospice made to their lives.
He said: “There was never any time limit with them, it was just whatever we needed. It was like that for every single one of their team.
“They were brilliant in a setting where you are totally powerless and they gave you that bit of power – making that person you love comfortable and they make that happen. I had to ring them at two in the morning once and they were there in half an hour.
“There was a time where I hadn’t slept for about 72 hours and the nurse said ‘You look tired, you need some rest’ so they put someone in overnight. The spectrum of what they do is incredible.”
Mrs Tudor said that after their most challenging year on record, the support from the public remains at the core of what they do. She said: “I go back to how loyal the public are to the hospice, how important it is to them and they keep supporting us and thank goodness they do.
“We would be in a very different position if we had not had that support.”
