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Helping hospices

By Jo Flood

Hospices provide free care and compassionate treatment to over 200,000 people a year who are faced with life-threatening illnesses, as well as supporting their families and carers. The hospice movement has grown rapidly in recent years and at the last count involved around 100,000 volunteers.

As in other areas of health services, there's a wide range of volunteering opportunities available. "People don't always know how broad the opportunities are," says Jean Hindmarch, Projects Director for Help the Hospices. "It's not only dealing with patients in a clinical capacity." Far from it - there are opportunities for accountants, musicians and drivers, to name just a few.

Matching volunteers

St Ann's Hospice in Manchester involves almost 600 volunteers. "We do our best to match the volunteers' skills to the opportunities by finding out what their hobbies, interests and skills are," explains Nina Savage, who manages the volunteering project. "Most people who volunteer have had an experience with the hospice and want to give something back. Most of them are interested in patient contact, and choose to work on the wards, for instance, taking patients tea and coffee and flower arranging."

There are plenty of other opportunities too, like working in the charity shops and fundraising by helping out at big events or servicing collection boxes (the hospice requires £16,000 per day to keep running).

St Ann's is working on broadening opportunities for volunteers still further. "We've started getting more younger volunteers," Nina says, "especially 16-19 year olds who want to go into medicine. They can extend their voluntary work to work placements and get some good experience."

Therapists and counsellors

The Mulberry Centre is part of the West Middlesex University Hospital Trust and supports people affected by the diagnosis of cancer.

"All our therapists and counsellors are volunteers," says Sue Sullivan, the Macmillan Volunteer and Service Assistant. "They are all fully-qualified and might have another job, be newly retired or maybe have young children and be working part-time." Roles include aromatherapists, masseurs, and meditation and tai chi instructors.

"We also have five volunteer gardeners," Sue says, "and the role of 'meeter and greeter' is always very popular." The centre offers support and information to cancer patients of all ages, as well as their families and carers, and is manned by three full-time staff and over 40 volunteers. Sue sums it up by saying that, "It would be almost impossible to run the hospice without volunteers."

In fact, according to a recent report by the Institute of Volunteering Research, commissioned by Help the Hospices, on average each volunteer contributes £1500 worth of work per year. With volunteers contributing 18 million hours a year, this means a total monetary value of £133 million.