Background:
Saint Catherine’s Hospice was founded in 1985 and moved to a new purpose built hospice in April 2004. It covers a large geographical area of approximately 1600 square miles encompassing Scarborough, Ryedale, Whitby, Bridlington and Driffield.
It is a mainly rural area with a population of about 200,000 but has much to offer as a place to live encompassing as it does easy access to the coast, North York Moors, Forestry Commission sites, Yorkshire Wolds and the cultural aspects of York and Hull (City of Culture 2017).
After ten years our current Chief Executive is leaving to pursue other life interests.
The hospice itself provides a range of both in-house and community services and is at the forefront of delivering palliative care to a range of patients with diagnoses other than cancer. We have a particular expertise in working with neurology patients and have two community neurology nurse specialists as well as providing respite care. Our three day-hospice facilities also have expertise in providing short interventions of care to heart failure patients, which enables them to stay at home for longer and prevents recurrent hospital admissions.
In addition to these community services we also have a team of community palliative care nurse specialists, a team of specialist link nurses working with care homes, a specialist link nurse in Whitby community hospital, consultant clinics and support to Whitby, Malton and Bridlington community hospitals and Scarborough Acute hospital, an out of hours telephone support service and a peripatetic bereavement counselling service for both adults and children. The one element we are missing – hospice at home – is planned for development over the next two years.
In house facilities include pre and post bereavement counselling, lymphoedema clinic, complementary therapy clinics, four nurse led end of life beds and sixteen specialist palliative care in-patient beds, as well as a busy education department providing in-house and external courses.
The hospice has just undertaken a full organisational review to make us “fit for the future” which will take us to 179 staff and approximately 600 volunteers. The budget for 2014/15 is £5.3m and we receive about 28% of our funding from statutory sources. Helping us raise the remaining funds from our very loyal community are twelve shops and a Lottery as well as a very successful fundraising team.
The hospice is a well-respected and loved organisation embedded in the community it serves and the prospect of developing our services to patients and their families further is an exciting and rewarding challenge.
If you would like an informal discussion or a tour round the hospice then please contact:
Ian Westmoreland, , 01723 512296. Ian has just retired as Chairman of the hospice and is therefore independent of the interview panel. He is available up to the 9th June.