The CEO of Peace Hospice Care says that after a “difficult” period over the past year the team are looking to the future as they celebrate 30 years of end-of-life care for thousands of patients.
Jackie Tritton, who was appointed as CEO of Peace Hospice Care shortly after Easter last year, explained that the charity hospice hopes to celebrate its 30th anniversary by planning for the future to recover lost funds and educate people how the hospice can help before a patient reaches the end-of-life stage.
The CEO said that the year was problematic as the group was “on high-alert” since the start of the pandemic and trying to care for patients in a safe way.
Along with the task of caring for Covid patients, the CEO says a big challenge was managing staff who were remote learning, and keeping morale high.
She said: “In the summer, there was an optimistic view we were going to be out of it, and then in November it started again. Remobilising and stopping has been a big challenge, we opened our shops, we closed our shops. So that has been a big challenge.
“Because we know the NHS has been under so much pressure , we have been asked to support the NHS in different ways. We had to really build on our community services to make sure we can stop patients having to go into hospital when they don’t need to.
“I think this time (third lockdown) though, the staff and a whole society had got tired. The first time you could see a light at the end of the tunnel, and this time it felt longer.”
The Peace Memorial Hospital in the 1930s
The CEO added it was “emotionally and psychologically” harder for staff, but morale was boosted by constant communication and keeping staff informed to make them confident in coming in and caring for patients.
And now with the 30th anniversary, a set of both virtual and physical events are planned to celebrate all of these years and boost fundraising.
She said this, in essence, is a start of a brighter future for the hospice.
An early picture in the Peace Hospice
Ms Tritton said: “One it’s an opportunity to say thank you to everybody, because we had an enormous amount of support from the community during lockdown, but it’s also a way to feel like we’re getting back to normal business. Doing lots of events that will hopefully engage our community.”
Talking about the support the hospice needs after the pandemic, she said: “It’s not just about us raising funds, because we have been impacted through the loss our shops over the last year, and our fundraising events have definitely dropped.”
As a result, Peace Hospice Care hopes to reopen its charity shop by April 12 – if restrictions permit – and the hospice will host more “clinical fundraising” to raise awareness.
She said: “A lot of people assume you come here to die, and it’s about dispelling those myths and showing we can do a lot more proactive work supporting people earlier in their illness, to allow them to have their choice at the end.”
Outside the Peace Hospice shop
The hospice could achieve this with their five-year-plan, which helps care for those in need and lessen the load of patients going to hospital when sufficient care can be provided at the hospice.
Exploring what positives can be taken from the pandemic, Ms Tritton believes that incorporating their improved e-commerce will be part of their future plan, as well as encouraging staff to wear face masks.
She added: “We’ve learnt a lot of things, where it has taken us probably a couple of years for everyone to do Zoom – a lot of our patients can use it. We don’t want to go back completely to what we were.
“The shops are going to change, the high streets are going to change, so we need to reflect the responses.”
The 30th anniversary is not just a celebration of the work at Peace Hospice Care, but a massive thank-you to the community who have helped with donations and support over the 30 years.
Peace Hospice Care hopes to continue celebrations through various events that step back in history, have the`community come together for new artwork, and in general honour all the hard work over the years.
While upcoming fundraising events are subject to change depending on the Covid-19 restrictions later in the year, anyone wishing to keep up-to-date with the 30th anniversary activities should visit: https://www.peacehospicecare.org.uk/supporting-us/fundraising-and-events/
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