Thirteen years of voluntary effort will pay off for North West Hospice today when a £600,000 inpatient unit is officially opened by the Minister for Health, Mr Cowen.
The new unit is based in Sligo but the hospice serves a wide area over Sligo/Leitrim and parts of Cos Donegal, Cavan, Roscommon and Mayo. The entire capital cost of the eight-bed unit has been met with voluntary funds, and a total of more than u2 £2 million has been raised over the past decade. Sixteen full-time nurses are now employed by the hospice, 12 of them in the new unit.
North West Hospice staff officer Mr Eugene McGloin said the unit represented a remarkable voluntary achievement. About 40 people attended the first meeting of the hospice 13 years ago, but now there are more than 1,000 people involved in fund-raising. Ten years ago the hospice had been refused State funding. Now it receives annual State funding of £295,000 directly with an additional package of services worth £125,000 each year.
However, the hospice will need to raise between £250,000 and £300,000 each year to continue its work of providing care for people with advanced cancer.
Mr McGloin said hospice nurses would expect to see 150 deaths in the community and an additional 30 to 40 in the in-patient unit each year. There are about 200 new referrals annually.
He said there were still shortfalls in the service. The most marked of these was the lack of State funding for posts in bereavement counselling.
"There is a total lack of recognition of the need for a bereavement counsellor and this is a significant service gap. There are more than 100 families who need this service every year. A bereavement counsellor should be funded by the North Western Health Board," he said.
There will always be at least two nurses working in the in-patient unit at any time, which is more than the staffing level recommended by the State. Mr McGloin said the hospice was committed to providing the best standard of care, based on the model developed at St Christopher's Hospice in London.