St Michael's Hospice

A staggering £2.5million is the amount needed annually to run St Michael's Hospice, which gives specialist care to people with a terminal illness.

The Hospice has cared for more than 8,000 local people in the two decades since it was built in the grounds of a former convent in Herefordshire.

The staff at St Michael's provide specialist palliative care for people with active and progressive incurable diseases, and support for their families and friends.

Founder and Managing Director of Herefordshire-based allpay.net Tony Killeen has long admired the valuable service carried out at St Michael's Hospice.

He is very keen to highlight the outstanding work of its dedicated staff as well as supporting the Hospice in a promotional manner.

To that end, Tony has made St Michael's one of allpay.net's good causes for the year and has given the go-ahead for the company to design and print the annual Hospice brochure; print its regular news letters and redesign its website.

St Michael's is the only Hospice in Herefordshire and the centre also takes some patients from neighbouring counties. But the service is costly to run, with the daily expense of all activities adding up to more than £6,000.

With just 15% of the overall running cost met by the NHS, the Hospice organises its own Lottery, which brings in about £16,000 each month. The Hospice also has 13 charity shops, mostly in Herefordshire, and collects an average of £400,000 a year in legacies.

Set in glorious countryside at Bartestree, the Hospice has gardens with panoramic views for patients to relax in and enjoy. Unusual visitors to the rural setting have included two lambs who were brought in to a patient, a farmer, to prove his business still functioned in his absence. St Michael's has an inpatient unit with 16 beds, made up of four single beds and three four-bedroom wards. There is also a purpose-built, three-storey Day Hospice extension that includes meeting rooms, offices and even a hairdressing salon for patients.

The Hospice has its own chapel and a full time chaplain, while the Social Care team supports patients and their families.

The Hospice is run by around 90 staff, and supported by over 500 volunteers who make essential contributions to patient wellbeing, fundraising, administration and the success of the charity shops.

The medical team includes several specialist palliative care doctors and there is always a professional on call 24 hours a day. Also on the site is an Education Centre - which runs in-house courses for staff and other health care professionals.

"We would also like to have more single rooms and more en-suite facilities and we are starting to get patients asking whether they can plug in laptops," said Head of Fundraising, Alison Palfrey.

"We are looking at the possibility of a re-development - which would increase our bed numbers by 2 and address other issues."

The Hospice's importance today is a far cry from when medical professionals expressed their scepticism towards such a centre ever being built in the county.

The idea for the Hospice came firmly into vision after the paths crossed in 1979 of Richard Miller, a local GP, and Freda Pearce, a Herefordshire woman in remission from cancer. Events were then set in motion that would have a positive impact on thousands of people's lives.

In 1974 Freda had, herself, become ill and was diagnosed with cancer. She received radiotherapy and when she was discharged in the spring she was given just six months to live. It was during convalescence she decided to raise funds for a body scanner and then she got involved with the idea of starting a hospice for Herefordshire.

The Freda Pearce Foundation was formed in 1979 and she was awarded the MBE three years later. The Freda Pearce Foundation was instrumental in raising £400,000 to get the project underway. Sadly, Freda died in the summer of 1983, before the Hospice was completed. But special permission was given for her to be buried near the Hospice in the grounds of Bartestree Convent.

An agreement was forged to lease the land from the convent for five pence a year for 99 years and, although the sisters were forced to leave the convent in 1992, the Hospice now owns the freehold of land on which it stands.

The £750,000 Hospice was completed in the summer of 1984 and Princess Alexandra officially opened it in May 1985. However, Chief Executive of St Michael's Hospice, Walter Brooks, acknowledges that society's expectations have changed in the two decades since the Hospice opened.

"Now, we expect, at the least, en-suite lavatory facilities and, preferably, washing and shower facilities," he said. He said that staff, volunteers and trustees had been working together formulating ideas for the re-development of the Hospice building with two purposes in mind.

"First, to provide facilities that are of the scale and quality to meet the needs of patients and their families at this most crucial point in the cycle of life and second, to provide the space needs of a much enlarged organisation than that which was envisaged at the start."

Although there is still a way to go, he hopes that the plans will be ready for public exhibition during the early part of 2006. "It is our duty to provide a facility that will continue to serve the people of Herefordshire and the surrounding areas well into the 21st Century."

For more information about St Michael's Hospice contact Alison Palfrey, Head of Fundraising, on 01432 851000 or e-mail her at: alison.palfrey@st-michaels-hospice.org.uk