HOW DOES CARE AT HOME WORK?
Once you have been referred to us by your GP or healthcare professional, we’ll invite you to the hospice or meet you at home to talk about the kind of care that will help you most. This could be any or all of the following:
Symptom Control
Our nurses and doctors work with you, and the people who are already treating you, to find support, treatments or medicines that can help you live fully. We will keep in touch in a way that suits you to make sure your symptoms are being managed properly, and offer advice to other doctors and nurses who are helping you.
We have also put together some useful advice on how you, or a loved one, can help to manage common symptoms.
Helping with Independence
Our therapies team will talk with you about what matters most; this could be anything from keeping your strength up so you can spend time with children or grandchildren, to help with making a cup of tea, or even talking through what death could look like at home.
We’ll then work with you to come up with ways to help you achieve what you want to day to day. This could involve personalised exercise plans, new equipment or reviewing the activities you do each day. You may also be invited to exercise and education classes with our specialist team or to work with our team one to one in our hospice gym.
In most cases our therapy team will provide you with support at our hospice, however if your illness means you are unable to come into the hospice, in certain circumstances our team will still visit you at home to offer support with breathlessness and fatigue management.
Our team can also help your relatives and friends understand how your condition might affect you, and help them be there for you, and provide specialist advice to other healthcare professionals in the community who may be involved in your care.
Emotional, spiritual and religious wellbeing
We know that mental and spiritual wellbeing is just as important as controlling physical symptoms, both for a person with a life-limiting or terminal illness and the people closest to them. Our Wellbeing Team can offer counselling and advice, as well as spiritual and religious support for you and those close to you. All sessions are confidential and many say that they use what they have learnt from our team to help other family and friends.
Welfare and financial support
We will never charge you for the care we provide but, for some, other costs and lost income caused by a life-limiting or terminal condition can be worrying. Our Welfare Advisor can help you with applying for government funding that you might not even realise you are entitled to.
If you have any questions, at any point during your care, please just ask any member of the team.
Meet our Hospice Teams
Our expert teams specialise in different types of palliative care to make sure we can tailor our support to what you need most. Here is some information about the different staff you might meet. Meet our Hospice Teams.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
If you have a question and can’t find the information you need, please get in touch with our team.
Our Contact page has a full list of numbers and email addresses, including ones that you can use out of hours.
Yes. It’s vital that you are able to tell us about your wishes and have the chance to make choices about your own care. We will always discuss care plans and suggested treatments with you (and your family and friends if you would like). You may wish to make some decisions about your future care and treatments. Making an Advance Care Plan is one way to record these. Download a printable Advance Care Plan.
No. We will never charge you for your care.
We’ll contact you in advance of a visit to decide on a time that works best for everyone.
Our team of physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and therapy technicians will talk with you to understand how your condition affects your ability to do everyday tasks and then work with you to come up with ways to overcome these difficulties. This may include offering you support at our hospice. For more information on what our team can do for you, go to: What care will I receive.
Before any of our team examine or treat you they will ask your permission or consent where you are well enough to give it. If at any stage, you are not able to consent to examination or treatment, we will do what we feel is in your best interests, based on our expertise and anything you have said previously about how you wish to be cared for. We will also take into account the wishes of people important to you.
If you ever feel that your consent has not been sought before examination or treatment, please let a member of the team know straight away.
Our Wellbeing Team are dedicated to helping you, and those close to you, through this difficult time. For more information on the spiritual, emotional, and financial help they can provide, please contact us.
By supporting St Catherine’s you can help us be there for more people when life comes full circle. Read more information on how to donate or fundraise for St Catherine’s Hospice.
If you are a St Catherine’s Hospice patient and would like access to your medical records, or copies of hospice correspondence regarding your treatment, please ask a member of our team.
We want everyone’s experience of St Catherine’s to be a good one. We hope you’ll never have reason to complain but if there’s something you’re not happy with, please tell us so we can try to put matters right. You can find out more about making a complaint by viewing our Complaints Policy.