Melanie Stone

This month, global firm INEOS has donated £10,000 to Oakhaven Hospice through the international INEOS Community Fund. This grant will support the vital work of the hospice as it finds new working methods to provide support and guidance to people across its local community dealing with end of life issues.

Oakhaven Hospice provides specialist palliative care and support for over 250 patients, carers and families at any one point across the New Forest. The Hospice’s mission is to meet the end of life needs of its community while aspiring to make every moment matter by promoting quality of life for people with life limiting conditions and their families. As part of a wide range of care services the hospice provides traditional support,   social interaction, physiotherapy, complementary therapy, as well as counselling and bereavement services.

The grant will be used by Oakhaven Hospice to fund its vital work as it finds new ways of operating its service in the wake of the Coronavirus crisis. It will fund a new “Stay Connected” telephone support line to allow Hospice staff to deliver care and expertise, in line with social distancing requirements. Operated by a Registered General Nurse this service is an essential response to the Covid-19 pandemic and allows Oakhaven to support their community more than ever during these difficult times.

Oakhaven Hospice Chief Executive,  Andrew Ryde, said:  “We are delighted to have received this support from the INEOS Community Fund, which has come at a pivotal moment as we work to evolve our services to best support our community to ensure that we make a real difference to people’s lives and help make every moment matter.”

The £1m INEOS Community Fund was established by INEOS Chairman Sir Jim Ratcliffe in March 2020 in tandem with the company’s Covid-19 “Hands On” campaign, which set up new production lines to provide millions of bottles of free hand sanitiser each month to hospitals and frontline healthcare.

The Community fund enables INEOS sites across the world to support the charitable organisations doing vital work in their local communities at this particularly difficult time.

The INEOS Community Fund representative from the Lyndhurst office, Nathan Moore, said:  “We were delighted to be able to help Oakhaven Hospice as they adapt to these very challenging COVID times.  Their new Stay Connected Helpline will allow them to continue their brilliant work of providing support to our local community”.

More information on the work of Oakhaven Hospice  and details on how you can support it can be found via its website:https://www.oakhavenhospice.co.uk/

On Thursday 18 June the Oakhaven Hospice shops will be reopening in New Milton and Shirley, at Fairview Parade in Hythe and at 10 St Thomas Street in Lymington.

Each shop will be open from 10am to 4pm, Monday to Saturday, and will have social distancing measures in place to safeguard customers, volunteers and staff.

Oakhaven Hospice’s other shops in Lymington, Highcliffe and Hythe will also reopen soon. The shops are an important source of income for the hospice, which relies on fundraising, legacies and donations for 90% of its income. With many fundraising events postponed or cancelled due to the coronavirus lockdown, the reopening of Oakhaven’s shops is a welcome step at a worrying time.

The Oakhaven Shops team ask that everyone kindly respects the new social distancing instructions in each shop. Payment by card will be the preferred method of payment and since the team can no longer reuse plastic carrier bags, it would be advisable to bring your own bags for your purchases.

Due to new precautionary measures to quarantine donations it will be difficult to accept donations at all times in the shops whilst trading. If you would like to donate goods to the shops, please take them between 10am and 1pm Monday to Friday direct to the Oakhaven van behind the New Milton shop. You can also donate goods between 10am and 1pm Monday to Friday at the shops in Shirley, Fairview Parade Hythe and 10 St Thomas Street in Lymington.

The new process regarding van collection and deliveries will be announced soon.

To donate items of furniture, please send photos to fairview@oakhavenretail.co.uk.
Furniture needs to meet certain criteria which the team will explain when responding to your messages and depending on space within the shop they may not be able to receive the items immediately.

Please note that due to health and safety regulations the following items of furniture and furnishings cannot be accepted: computers, duvets and pillows, gas appliances, white electrical goods, upholstered furniture without a fire label or no longer in a clean and sellable condition.

Ann Newton, Oakhaven Shops Retail Manager, said “We really appreciate the support from our customers and strive to enable a new safe and pleasant shopping experience.

We sincerely hope to open our remaining stores soon and will advise as we are able to do so. Thank you for your understanding”

For further enquiries about the Oakhaven Hospice Shops, contact Ann Newton on ann.newton@oakhavenretail.co.uk.

The 7th to 13th October 2019 is Hospice Care week. “Hospice Care Week is our chance to celebrate the amazing work across the UK of more than 200 hospices, who provide help, support and care to over 200,000 patients, carers and families every year.” (Hospice UK, 2019)

I am passionate about hospice care and will continually promote their work because I have seen first-hand how it can make such a huge difference to those whom they support. My story is fairly unique in that I had a long nursing career specialising in palliative care, much of that spent working in hospices but I am now in the situation whereby I am a patient in the palliative stage of my disease. I worked for many years as a Palliative Care Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS) in the community for St Margaret’s Hospice but took ill health retirement a few years ago because my ovarian cancer recurred and I am now living with advanced, metastatic disease which means my cancer has spread to other parts of my body.

About a year ago I was referred to my local hospice, Oakhaven, for counselling. I felt a huge sense of relief to be referred because I knew that I would be able to access the most amazing support and resources. Hospices are very much about helping people affected by a progressive and life limiting disease to live their best life whether that be patients or their families. I remember the anxiety and fear that a hospice referral created in patients under my care as a Palliative Care CNS but once they understood what it was and what it meant; they felt that same relief as I did myself as a patient.

When most people think of hospice care they think of a building in which people are admitted for end of life care. During my nursing career I heard so many times from patients and their families that they thought the hospice was a place to die but this is only a tiny part of the specialist care that a hospice provides. Of course there are patients who die in a hospice but most of the work they do is about promoting life and living at home which is what I am focusing on today. The way in which they do this is through alleviating distressing symptoms; listening to difficulties that arise and helping to find solutions – where appropriate; giving advice and signposting to services to provide support at home; providing specialist palliative care in the community; providing support to loved ones; offering outpatient services such as day care or clinic appointments; providing physiotherapy and occupational therapy services; acting as an advocate for those needing it; providing peer support; just being there at the end of the phone on bad days, and so much more. Hospice services are very much about providing the care and support that each individual person needs and that can differ greatly.

Most of the support that patients and their families receive is in their own homes but there are occasions when admission to a hospice in-patient unit is appropriate. Most admissions to a unit are to alleviate very complex symptoms that are incredibly difficult to manage at home because of the need for continual assessment and adjustment of treatment. Once symptoms become more stable most patients will go back home. It wouldn’t be unusual for a patient to have several admissions throughout the palliative phase of their disease but the goal will always be to stabilise them in order for them to continue living the best life they can at home. Whether patients are admitted for specialist palliative care or end of life care, they will find themselves in a place where there is such attention to detail, kindness, respect and love that it feels like an escape from the world. I know when I need more support that the local hospice will be a sanctuary for me and my family whether the support is via community services or in-patient. So this week I salute all hospices and I urge everyone to support your local hospice because without them I know life for many would be unbearable.

Diane Evans-Wood
1st October, 2019