A Worcestershire hospice has been awarded £16,642 from The National Lottery.
The new funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, which distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes, goes to St Richard’s Hospice, in Worcester to help support the charity’s Living Well services.
The award-winning project – Community Building for people with an Incurable Illness – unites patients who are living with an incurable illness including cancer; motor neurone disease; multiple sclerosis; Parkinson’s and respiratory, cardiac and renal conditions.
In the past year (23/24) 542 people were supported to live well by the service. This includes through therapeutic days, courses and workshops at the Wildwood Drive, Worcester, hospice. Courses including Tai Chi, Relaxation for Wellbeing, Managing Fatigue, and Breathlessness have proved popular. Nature for Wellbeing and Creative Workshops are also well attended.
Head of Living Well Services, Charlotte Nicholls, said: “We’re delighted and grateful to The National Lottery Community Fund for this wonderful grant which will help us to reach even more patients and their carers when they need us.”
She added:”We support individuals to learn how to manage their symptoms independently, enabling them to live fully by doing what matters most to them as people. They do this through the specialist support that they receive at the hospice, and also by meeting other people that are living with incurable illnesses. The sense of shared experience that people find in the hospice community is invaluable.”
Recent feedback from a patient following the therapeutic day included: “A huge thank you for the work of this caring and nurturing group of people. I was made to feel very welcome and very special, and have received help and encouragement every step of the way, along with practical help and ideas. Thank you.”
The hospice has also introduced a Wellbeing Café that runs every Wednesday between 10.30am and 3pm which is open to anyone living with an incurable illness and their family members, carers and friends who are looking for help. A referral from a health professional is not needed to attend the Café.
The Wellbeing Café offers a chance for people to drop in for expert advice from staff and trained Living Well volunteers, signposting to services in the community and hospice and the chance to share experiences.
St Richard’s Hospice is an independent charity offering free, expert care for adults with an illness that cannot be cured, and support for their loved ones and carers.
Each year the hospice team supports more than 3,100 patients, family members and bereaved people in Worcestershire.
It will cost in the region of £12m to run the hospice this year, which includes patient care and all the necessary support services.
St Richard’s relies on voluntary support, including from donations, gifts in Wills, retail and events for the majority of its income with the remainder funded by the NHS.
For more information about St Richard’s Hospice visit www.strichards.org.uk
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About The National Lottery Community Fund
We are the largest non-statutory community funder in the UK – community is at the heart of our purpose, vision and name.
We support activities that create resilient communities that are more inclusive and environmentally sustainable and that will strengthen society and improve lives across the UK.
We’re proud to award money raised by National Lottery players to communities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and to work closely with government to distribute vital grants and funding from key Government programmes and initiatives.
As well as responding to what communities tell us is important to them, our funding is focused on four key missions, supporting communities to:
- Come together
- Be environmentally sustainable
- Help children and young people thrive
- Enable people to live healthier lives.
Thanks to the support of National Lottery players, we distribute over £600 million a year through 13,000+ grants and plan to invest over £4 billion of funding into communities by 2030. We’re privileged to be able to work with the smallest of local groups right up to UK-wide charities, enabling people and communities to bring their ambitions to life.
National Lottery players raise over £30 million each week for good causes throughout the UK. Since The National Lottery began in 1994, £49 billion has been raised and more than 690,000 individual grants have been made across the UK – the equivalent of around 240 National Lottery grants in every UK postcode district.
National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. Thanks to them, last year (2023/24) The National Lottery Community Fund awarded over half a billion pounds (£686.3 million) of life-changing funding to communities across the UK, supporting over 13,700 projects to turn their great ideas into reality.
For more information at The National Lottery Community Fund visit
Home | The National Lottery Community Fund (tnlcommunityfund.org.uk)
More information about St Richard’s Hospice
Who does St Richard’s Hospice care for?
St Richard’s cares for people with an illness that cannot be cured, who have complex needs which cannot be met by other services. These include cancer, and neurological, respiratory, cardiac and renal conditions.
All its services are available to people registered with a South Worcestershire GP. The St Richard’s In-patient Unit cares for people across Worcestershire.
St Richard’s cares for people by:
- Supporting people, their loved ones and carers, to manage their illness and remain independent for as long as possible, giving emotional, social, practical and spiritual support
- Providing dedicated, individualised palliative and end of life support helping people to control their pain and other symptoms of concern
- Offering support to enable a person to live well through the course of their illness alongside other therapies that are intended to prolong life
- Supporting our patients, loved ones and carers before and through bereavement
- Working in collaboration with our communities to ensure we are inclusive, respect diversity and provide equitable access to meet the needs of our patients, their loved ones and carers
- Working in partnership with other health care providers and organisations
- Encouraging wider understanding that death and dying is a part of life
- Supporting the local community to be well informed about the care available to them
- Supporting the health and social care workforce through learning and development to provide high-quality, individualised palliative and end of life care
Where St Richard’s cares
St Richard’s offers free care and support for people in the hospice, in the community, in GP surgeries, by telephone or by digital options.
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