the hospice movement

Palliative care is for people whose illness is no longer curable. It enables them to achieve the best possible quality of life during a terminal illness, while providing support to their families. A trained nurse, doctor and social worker, Dame Cicely Saunders identified the need for a place to care for the terminally ill through a friendship she struck up with a patient under her care. This patient spent the last two months of his life on a busy surgical ward because there was nowhere else he could go.

Dame Cicely pioneered and oversaw the opening of St Christopher's Hospice in London in 1967 as a medical, teaching and research facility dedicated to the physical, emotional and spiritual care of the dying.
Hospice care has grown into a worldwide movement that has radically changed the way we approach death and dying. In hospices multi-disciplinary teams strive to offer freedom from pain, dignity, peace and calm at the end of life. There are now 230 hospices in the U.K., including 29 for children and 3 exclusively for people with HIV/AIDS. The non-NHS Hospices provide 80% of the beds in the UK but most of their income derives from charitable donations and legacies. No charge is made to the users of hospice care.

You matter because you are you and you matter until the last moment of your life. We will do all we can, not only to help you die peacefully but to live until you die.

Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the UK hospice movement.

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out. But when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Hospice care is about adding life to days when days cannot be added to life.

(Source unknown)