Published on: Friday 29 Nov 2024 at 12:46
St Clare Hospice has received a £5,000 donation from the Qualis Community Benefit Fund to help develop the charity’s Compassionate Communities programme, which provides community-based services to better support people living with life-limiting illnesses.
The grant from Qualis will be used to support several initiatives within the Compassionate Communities programme, including:
Compassionate Neighbours: Currently supporting approximately 130 active ‘matches’ and with the potential to support significantly more, this project trains and matches volunteers to provide one-to-one support to people who are lonely or socially isolated due to illness, frailty or age.
Bereavement Cafes: These weekly ‘pop up’ cafes in nine locations offer ‘light touch’ peer support to people struggling with bereavement, facilitated by trained volunteers. Nearly 500 people benefit from the cafes each year.
St Clare Dementia Support: Dementia support is provided by specially trained volunteers who follow the Namaste Care approach to support people with advanced dementia, helping to soothe agitation and enhance their wellbeing. St Clare has trained more than 160 carers to date, and more than 400 people with advanced dementia have already benefitted from the service. St Clare now aims to expand this very successful project to train whole staff teams in individual care homes and help them establish sustainable Namaste Care programmes of their own.
Community Space: The Community Space is a converted storage building within the hospice grounds which is offered at no charge for use by local, nonprofit groups helping ill and/or isolated people to use. At present the Community Space is hosting at least six groups each week.
Representatives from the Community Benefit Fund judging panel recently visited St Clare’s to find out more about the Compassionate Communities programme.
Qualis Property Solutions managing director, Ben Johnson, commented: “St Clare Hospice provides such a valuable service to the community, and it gives us great pleasure to be able to support them in building on the success of the Compassionate Communities programme.
“This donation will directly and indirectly benefit hundreds of residents across the Epping Forest District, supporting those affected by life-limiting illness and their families and carers too.”
Fiona Venus, Compassionate Communities programme manager at St Clare Hospice, said: “Qualis’ generous support is making a real difference to how we are able to support local people, helping us to build stronger communities through vital services like Café Clare as well as our bereavement cafes, Compassionate Neighbours programme and community space activities.
“Thank you Qualis for coming to see us…we are so grateful for partnerships like this, which help us continue to make a positive impact.”