By referring to St Clare Hospice, you will be ensuring that your clients, patients, service users and local people you work with have access to specialist, compassionate palliative care, tailored to their needs.
An overview of our services
Inpatient Unit – Our 8-bed Inpatient Unit offers specialist, compassionate palliative care to people living with a life-limiting illness who have complex needs, or who are approaching the end of life.
Hospice at Home – Our Hospice at Home team visit local people living with a life-limiting illness in their own homes, usually when a person is approaching the end of life or needs support during a period of transition between community care packages.
Community Palliative Care Team – Our CPCT service is comprised of a professional team of senior clinical nurse specialists in palliative care. Their role is to offer specialist medical advice to professionals, and assess and support our patients to ensure care individuals’ needs are met.
Outpatient service – Our Outpatient service provides rehabilitative, supportive and patient-led care to individuals living with a life-limiting illness – right from the point of diagnosis. Our multi-disciplinary team of specialist nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and supportive volunteers empower individuals to live as well as possible.
All St Clare Hospice patients also have access to a multi-disciplinary team of professionals who can work to address an individual’s diagnosis and wellbeing holistically. From consultants and clinical nurse specialists, physiotherapists and occupational therapists, to social workers, counsellors and chaplaincy services – our skilled teams can help to offer joined-up care to local people.
Community-led wellbeing services – Our community wellbeing services aim to offer social and emotional support to local people living with a life-limiting illness, who are approaching later life, or experiencing bereavement. With a focus on tackling social isolation, improving awareness and education, and empowering communities to be resilient and support each other, these varied services aim to meet the needs of our wider local community.
Bereavement services – Our bereavement services are open to all local people experiencing bereavement – no matter how recent or long ago their loss took place. We offer varied levels of care, including lighter-touch emotional support to counselling for those with more complex needs.
Who can access St Clare Hospice’s services?
Our wide range of services are designed to meet the needs of our local community. At St Clare, we form part of a network of around 200 hospices across the UK, each providing free, palliative care services within their NHS commissioned ‘catchment areas’.
The St Clare Hospice catchment area covers West Essex and the East Hertfordshire borders – the community in which we serve and aim to provide responsive care and support for. We serve the whole of West Essex, from the Cambridgeshire border in the north, to the East London border in the south.
Our services are for all adults aged over 18 and are registered with a West Essex GP. We are also commissioned to provide care for patients and families on the East Hertfordshire border. We share Bishop’s Stortford, Sawbridgeworth and the surrounding areas with Isabel Hospice, based in Welwyn Garden City, for Day Therapy, Outpatients and Inpatient care. Many patients choose to come to St Clare as it is easy for their family and friends to travel to. Isabel Hospice provides the community service for this area.
Our specialist, medical and therapeutic services are for adults living with a life-limiting illness who are 18+ years old. A life-limiting diagnosis may include progressive illnesses such as cancer, heart, lung and kidney diseases and also neurological conditions such as Motor Neurone Disease and end stage Dementia. It’s the needs of our patients that matter to us rather than the diagnosis.
Our bereavement services are open to anyone within the local community, including children and young people.
Our community wellbeing services, such as social groups, workshops and activities, are also open-access, available to anyone within the local community.
More information on referral criteria…
To refer to our services, please consider the following criteria:
- The individual is aged over 18 and is registered with a GP in West Essex (all St Clare services) or the East Hertfordshire border (Inpatient, Day Therapy, Outpatients services and Bereavement and Family Support only).
- The individual has a progressive disease that cannot be cured, or the patient does not want treatment and they are competent to make that decision. Any life-limiting disease is appropriate for our services including non-cancer conditions.
- The individual has complex problems including symptoms that may need managing, and emotional, psychological, social or spiritual issues that are important to the person.
- The individual is entering the final end of life phase.
- Assessments suggest that care of the individual would be best managed through palliative care in the community, through our Outpatient services or as an inpatient at our Hospice/
- The individual must have consented to their referral, if they are competent to do so.
Make a referral
All health, social care and voluntary sector professionals can make a referral to St Clare Hospice.
For more information on making a referral to our hospice services, please click here.
Alternatively, please feel free to call our 24 Hour Advice Line on 01279 773773.
Find out more about our services and how to access them
You can find out about our care and and how to refer to us via our website. However, we’d also like to invite you to subscribe to our St Clare email updates, which contain useful information about new and existing services available to your patients, clients and service users, and how you can refer to us. You’ll also receive updates out about exclusive events, education and training available to health and social care professionals in West Essex and East Hertfordshire.
If you could benefit from regular updates on palliative care services and expertise for your local patients, please subscribe below.
Get in touch
If you’d like discuss St Clare Hospice’s services, working in partnership with us, or have any other professional enquiries, we’d love to hear from you.
Call our 24 Hour Advice Line on 01279 773773