Ahead of this year’s World Hospice & Palliative Care Day on 9th October, each day we will be sharing news, initiatives and campaigns from Willowbrook Hospice to show our community how we are committed to equity and equality of care. We believe everyone should have access to palliative and end of life care, no matter who they are or what their background is. We will also be raising awareness and understanding of the needs of people living with life-limiting illnesses and their families.
Willowbrook Hospice’s trading company, which runs our nine shops, distribution warehouse and our café at The Living Well, has been working with other charities and community organisations for a number of years, forming productive partnerships that have supported some of the most vulnerable people in our community.
Our shops are absolutely vital to our income, and go a long way to helping us make the £3.8m per year that we need to raise in funds in order to keep our Hospice open and continue providing our specialist care to people in St Helens and Knowsley who desperately need it. Without the generosity of our community donating goods to our shops, this would be impossible.
When anyone chooses Willowbrook to make a donation to, we are tremendously grateful. But sometimes we receive donations that can’t be sold in our shops or are surplus to requirements. Willowbrook’s trading company has a long history of working with other essential charities and organisations within our community to provide support and ensure that no donation is wasted.
Recently Andy Reid MBE’s Standing Tall Foundation, which provides assistance to vulnerable people in need, came to us to see if we could aid them in supporting a veteran who had just been rehoused:
It’s absolutely fantastic that we had support from Willowbrook to be able to provide household goods to a veteran in need who we were helping.
– Andy Reid MBE, Chairman of Standing Tall Foundation
Amongst other organisations, including local churches and public sector organisations managing refugee resettlement schemes, our trading company has worked with:
- The Hope Centre, providing moses baskets and plastic baths.
- The Big Help Project, supplying fridges.
- Sefton Women’s and Children’s Aid
- Teardrops, supplying household goods for people moving into accommodation.
- Dogs Trust in Huyton
Almost all of these partnerships have helped some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people in our community, helped us to reach out and support groups that have limited access to care, and contributed towards achieving our our vision of equity in access to care.
Willowbrook Hospice is one of the UK members of the Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance (WHPCA), an international non-governmental organisation focusing exclusively on hospice and palliative care development worldwide and a global voice on hospice and palliative care. World Hospice & Palliative Care Day is an annual unified day of action to celebrate and support hospice and palliative care around the world. This year’s theme is “Leave no-one behind – equity in access to palliative care”.