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The Peace Hospice |
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 The Peace Hospice recognises that when someone is very ill, everyone in the family is affected. The Peace Hospice’s care extends beyond the treatment of physical symptoms to consider the support, emotional, psychological, spiritual and social needs of our patients, their families, children, friends and carers.
We are a registered charity and need to constantly raise funds, with around one quarter of our funding coming directly from the National Health Service. The balance must be raised from grants, legacies, the generosity of our supporters and our charity shops. |
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| The Peace Hospice provides specialist palliative care for people from South West Hertfordshire with a terminal illness. Most of our patients have cancer but an increasing number have other conditions such as neurological disease. |
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| Our care is holistic and we look after the whole person, helping with emotional and spiritual issues as well as the physical symptoms each patient has. We focus on enabling patients to live their lives to the full and providing the best quality of life when a cure is not possible. |
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| We have a team of specialist staff including doctors, nurses, social workers counsellors and therapists who use their expertise and skills to support each patient and meet his/her individual needs. We can reduce pain and other physical symptoms, help patients come to terms with their illness, provide practical support with home care and benefits, and support patients’ families and friends through bereavement. As well as traditional clinical and social care, we also provide complementary therapies such as massage, aromatherapy and relaxation techniques. |
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| Support for families and carers is an integral part of our service and is very much part of our holistic approach. |
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| The hospice has been carefully designed so that it provides a warm, friendly and supportive environment and our team of staff and volunteers work hard to ensure everyone feels welcome. Within the building we provide in patient care in an 11 bedded unit and day care/out patient care for people who are well enough to stay in their own homes. We also provide a range of bereavement support including counselling and support groups and these are open to anyone who has been bereaved and not just those whose loved one has been cared for by the hospice. The ‘STARS’ grief programme for children is also part of our bereavement support. |
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| Outside the hospice building we provide a hospice at home service which takes hospice care to patients in their own homes and give people the choice of staying at home and dying there if that is what they wish. |
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| It costs £3.1 million to provide care 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and we only receive around 25% of this from the NHS. We are heavily dependent on the generosity of the community to continue to provide our high quality care. |
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This last year our team:
- Cared for 244 patients in our inpatient unit
- Welcomed 165 people to our day care services
- 547 people were referred to our bereavement service
- 324 people were supported by our social work team
- 162 patients were treated by our lymphoedema service
- 55 patients were referred to hospice at home
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| All the care we provide is entirely free or charge. |
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| We need your help so we can continue to care for our local community and for our services to grow. |
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| If you would like to know more about how you can support our fundraising activities, please contact our fundraising team on 01923 330340. |
