25 летний юбилей со дня основания благотворительной организации "Помощь хосписам" [Новость добавлена - 27.10.2009]

[Новость добавлена - 11.04.2009]

Silver jubilee event at St James's Palace To celebrate the achievements of the last 25 years an evening reception was held at St James’s Palace in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.

On Monday 16 March 2009 we marked our contribution to the hospice movement at an event at St James's Palace. We welcomed 600 guests from the realms of business, politics and entertainment, as well as hospice founders, staff and volunteers from adults’ and children’s hospices. As we celebrate 25 years supporting hospice care, we are also looking forward to continuing to make a difference to the lives of patients and their friends and family.

Help the Hospices was founded by Anne, Duchess of Norfolk in 1984. Since then hospice care has made tremendous steps in the way caring for those living with life-limiting and terminal illness and their families. We have 182 members, all local charities themselves and all rooted in the communities they serve.

David Praill, Help the Hospices chief executive, says:

“We are absolutely delighted to be celebrating this anniversary and the huge strides hospice care has made, while recognising that many challenges still lie ahead. This gives us a wonderful opportunity to say thank you to those who have helped and supported both our charity since our founding and also the development of hospice care in the UK and across the world."

http://www.helpthehospices.org.uk/about-us/silver-jubilee/jubilee-event/

I lost my heart to hospice care
Our founder and president takes us on the journey that led to the foundation of Help the Hospices.

As we celebrate our charity’s 25th anniversary, we have chosen this moment to offer a brief account of the extent to which Help the Hospices has progressed since its launch in April 1984.

Everything Help the Hospices has achieved throughout the years could not have happened without the ever-lively, ever-cheerful commitment of our staff. I could never thank them enough for all that they have done, and continue to do for us so well.

And the same goes for all the friendly, helpful and patient people who have guided me during my many hospice visits. It is always a delight to see them again. I believe I unknowingly recruited one of these to Help the Hospices – she is still working for us – during my first tentative (and rather sticky) visit to Dame Cicely Saunders to discuss my ideas for a new national charity.

Cicely joined us as a trustee as soon as we were launched, giving us her advice and invaluable backing. Later she became our first president. She and the other trustees, at their very first meeting, decided that support for training was to be the top priority in spending our income, and that has largely continued.

I first lost my heart to hospice care in 1980 when I was invited by a doctor friend to visit St Joseph’s Hospice in Hackney. It was an overwhelming experience for me, after spending 25 years as an army wife, followed by two years as a learner duchess, trailing my husband as he was asked to fundraise for Westminster Cathedral. But I found what I wanted to do. At the time, St Joseph’s was planning for a new residential training wing and improvements to their day care facilities. I suggested that I could help them to fundraise for the project.

I also learned a lot about the hospice movement, particularly the ‘independent voluntary’ sector – with 60 hospices at that time – and about their funding difficulties. Some wise and caring people from the big corporates and trusts who had helped St Joseph’s, and have since done so much for Help the Hospices, advised that a central or national organisation could help as the movement developed further. A difficulty was that many who knew the benefits of hospice care, and had as trustees created their own local hospice to meet their local needs, were suspicious of interference from a new and overarching organisation. They were also worried at the prospect of competing in fundraising with yet another national ‘cancer charity’.

I sought the views of Professor Eric Wilkes at St Luke’s Hospice, Sheffield, a visionary and a pioneer of day care, who, at the request of the government, had written a report on the future of palliative care provision for the terminally ill. Even though I was a day late in keeping my appointment, he firmly supported our initiative. And, also to my great pleasure, the longstanding head of Marie Curie Cancer Care gave me instant backing, and followed this up with assistance for many of our later training programmes.

We also had early support from the British Medical Association, who gave us an office in Tavistock Square and a highly-experienced chairman for our major committee meetings and for the trustees.

Finally, at a meeting open to all hospices under the chairmanship of the BBC’s Brian Redhead, most of those present held up their hands in support of our project. They at once provided us with key representatives to form a Regional Advisory Body, a crucial guide for us, and a most friendly asset during the first five years of our work. The Regional Advisory Body saw a need to dispel any residue of hospice insularity and determined self-reliance. In our formalised list of objectives this was called ‘promoting cohesiveness’: encouraging cooperation and providing opportunities for the ready exchange of knowledge and experience between all hospice people, leading to a sense of ‘togetherness’, perhaps even the ‘family’ spirit which has always so appealed to me. Fundraising at the national level, with the risk of  competing with individual hospices, was to remain a worry. However, our first venture was an undoubted success.

We were given, most appropriately, a performance of the musical ‘On Your Toes’, just after our formal launch. Princess Alexandra agreed to support us. It was in the early days of computerised booking, and it proved to be too early. Her Royal Highness, at the front of the dress circle, carefully never looked down at the rows of empty eats immediately below her at the back of the stalls. She made us our very first ‘big money’ that night.

In spite of some criticism, I have been insistent that we stick to our title Help the Hospices, which has not enjoyed total approval. It fits our founding concept of a body wanting to act in the role of ‘friend’ and ‘servant’ of those we do our best to help – terms which we often used to describe our relationship in our early appeals for national support. Things may have changed a little but the title also seems to fit very well with our obligation to listen and respond, which is implicit in the charity’s new membership structure.

In this latest step forward, we at Help the Hospices are the principal receivers of help from virtually the whole movement, and are very grateful for it indeed.

http://www.helpthehospices.org.uk/about-us/silver-jubilee/anne-duchess-of-norfolk/