CHARITY
A mission to improve end-of-life care
Vision – Teesside Hospice CEO Mike Thornicroft.
Teesside Hospice has unveiled its new strategy, which refines its vision, mission and key goals, as it grows to manage rising referrals and costs.
Located on Northgate Road in Middlesbrough, Teesside Hospice provides care for around 3,000 people across the Tees Valley. In just 12 months( April 2024 to April 2025), the hospice saw a 16.4 % increase in referrals to its services, with demand growing significantly.
More than 1,800 referrals were made to the hospice’ s 10-bed in-patient unit, bereavement counselling service, wellbeing centre and lymphoedema clinic in this period.
And as need looks set to grow even further, the hospice has now launched its new strategy, with a vision, mission and goals geared around improving the care Teessiders receive.
According to research by Marie Curie, one in four people nationally are dying without proper end-of-life care. The organisation also expects that the need for palliative care will increase by 26.5 % by 2048 because people are living longer, often with multiple and complex conditions
Teesside Hospice CEO Mike Thornicroft said:“ We expect our number of referrals will only continue to grow over the coming years due to the UK’ s ageing population, and so the launch of our new strategy means we can anticipate and respond to the needs of people with life-limiting illnesses and their families.
“ We’ ve been putting a lot of thought into our future and our key objectives across the hospice and while we’ ve always been working towards these goals in many ways, they’ ve been refined with each of our core teams so that we all have a clear vision in mind as we move forward.”
The hospice is now focusing on its four core objectives: everyone matters and to hold people at its core; reach more people by developing services; aim for excellence in all the hospice does; and be the charity of choice for donors, staff and volunteers.
And the organisation is geared up to expand its offering to ensure it can continue to meet this increased demand – but it can only do so with the continued support of the community.
“ Under these new objectives, we want to keep growing so we have more capacity and ability to support the growing number of people who need us,” Mike said.
“ But as the need for our services rises so do our operational costs, and it currently costs around £ 18,500 each day to run the hospice. Less than 30 % is funded through statutory sources, so we really do depend on the support of donors and fundraisers.”
Corporate partnership and sponsorship is an important funding source for the hospice, with several well-known Teesside firms signed up to help it achieve its
Demand – more and more people are turning to the dedicated Teesside Hospice team for endof-life care – and the numbers are expected to rise even further.
goal of helping local people live as well as possible, for as long as possible.
Mike added:“ We’ re here for everyone across Teesside and we’ re not going anywhere, but we need the help of the community more than ever. As well as meeting the needs of the growing number of people requiring our services, we’ re also growing our offering to ensure we can reach even more people.
“ Our vision is to ensure local people get the very best care at the end of life – and as our referrals and service use grows, so does our drive for reaching and maintaining this goal.”
To find out more about Teesside Hospice, its work and how you can help, visit teessidehospice. org. The hospice’ s 2024-2025 impact report, which further explains its impact and goals, is also available on the website.
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