The Ayrshire Hospice is an independent charity that provides outstanding quality care and services which helps those with any life-limiting illness. Care is provided where there is no cure for the condition, but which improves the quality of each day for people who have a limited time to live.
The hospice helps people to live as actively as they can to the end of their lives - however long that may be, where ever that may be. Care is provided by hospice staff in a number of places including people’s own homes, hospitals and care homes as well as in the hospice’s purpose built day care and in-patient unit.
The Ayrshire Hospice looks after patients and families from across the whole of Ayrshire and during 2015-16 had 1,262 referrals including 442 from East Ayrshire, 416 from South Ayrshire and 391 from North Ayrshire.
Almost a third of the patients that come to the hospice in-patient unit are discharged and are able to return home after a period of care, assessment, treatment or respite.
The majority of the care provided by the hospice is provided in the community with just over 4,000 visits being made to patients during 2015-16 by our team of community specialist palliative care nurses.
Over 2,700 attendances were made to our day service Solas, allowing patients to visit the hospice for the day and giving them access to a range of services including therapy and interest groups, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, our drop in café, carers café and respite care.
195 employed staff and over 600 volunteers work together to provide outstanding hospice care across Ayrshire, at no cost to our patients or their families. Volunteers gave over 120,00 hours of their time to the hospice last year.
The care provided by the Ayrshire Hospice is at no cost to the patient. However, it does require extensive, on-going fundraising support. During 2015-16, it cost almost £7.4million to run all hospice services, including clinical, fundraising and support services – equating to approximately £20,000 per day. Against this we raised £7.9million with over £4.8 million being raised through voluntary donations.
80p of every pound donated goes directly to providing clinical services, the remaining 20p goes towards supporting clinical services.
During 2015/16 over £1.4million was left in bequests and legacies to the hospice by people in their Wills. This was closely followed by general donations and gift aid as the next highest income stream, realising over £942,000. Our shops network generated almost £884,000, closely followed by our popular hospice events programme which brought in just over £680,000. The Ayrshire Hospice lottery generated £647,432 and our Trusts and Grants programme provided an additional £277,394. NHS Ayrshire & Arran provided welcome partnership funding of over £2.7million.
