Dear editor,
As Service Director at Sue Ryder St John’s Hospice, I wanted to get in touch this Hospice Care Week to share our huge thanks with our Sue Ryder charity shop teams and volunteers in Bedfordshire for all their hard work.
I also want to thank everyone in the county who donates and shops in our Sue Ryder stores.
By generously donating your pre-loved items not only are you helping to reduce what goes into landfill and the need to manufacture that item again, but vitally you are helping to raise much-needed funds so hospices like ours can continue to be there when it matters.
This support is so vital as the government currently only provides about one-third of the funding that hospices like ours need.
How we die is important. I see firsthand just how much this matters, not just for the person dying, but the people around them.
End-of-life care isn’t a ‘luxury’ or a ‘nice to have’ extra. It is an essential part of healthcare and it’s a shocking situation that it takes the sale of second-hand shoes and handbags to shore up hospice funding.
Put simply, without the vital support of our charity shops, we’d be forced to close our doors or cut back some of our services, denying people dignity, comfort, and care at the end of their lives.
And it is a situation which is becoming more unsustainable and precarious as the cost of providing our care increases and more people are estimated to need this support in the future.
I hope by sharing my letter this Hospice Care Week we will encourage our local community to continue shopping and donating at their local Sue Ryder store while letting our Sue Ryder retail colleagues and volunteers know just how vital their work is.
We can’t be there when it matters without you all.
Thank you,
Allison Mann,
Service Director,
Sue Ryder St John’s Hospice
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