The Irish Hospice Foundation is backing the Hooves4Hospice campaign which is helping raise funds to build a Level 3 Hospice to provide specialist end-of-life care and support for people in the Midlands.
The ambitious fundraising project, which was launched by Tullamore Lions Club last week and has the support of other Lions Clubs and the Irish Hospice Foundation, involves recruiting a large number of farmers willing to rear a young animal, has the potential to raise a sizeable sum of money for a much-needed Midlands Hospice.
Our CEO Sharon Foley was one of the guest speakers at the launch in Mullingar. She said:
“People in the Midlands are at a disadvantage when it comes to hospice and palliative care services compared to those in other parts of the country. On the one hand there is excellent palliative homecare available, while on the other there is no regional specialist palliative care unit (often called regional hospice) in the Midlands. This means patients and their families are being denied the full range of services that come with a Level 3 hospice. As research has shown investment per person on specialist palliative care for people in Laois, Offaly, Westmeath is a fraction of that spent elsewhere. More worryingly patients have no choice in their place of care at end of life and have to rely on acute hospitals. In the Midlands, 36% of cancer patients who die, die in an acute hospital compared to 25% in the Mid-West. The excellent homecare teams need the support of specialist colleagues in regional hospices so as to be able to offer the best care to patients at end of life. All other areas have developed, or have plans to develop, inpatient units for their populations.
The Minister for Health told us this week that the current model of funding for capital development of hospice will remain. That is that the local community or hospice groups fund the capital costs of building a hospice and the Department of Health will commit to pay all of the – much more substantial – revenue costs of running the hospice. Now is the time to act to secure the future of hospice and palliative care and its further development in Laois, Offaly, Longford and Westmeath.”
To find out more and to support the Hooves4Hospice campaign, go here.
