The latest news and updates on and at St Lukes Plymouth. Follow us on social media or sign up to our newsletter for more updates.

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BLOG: National Apprenticeship Week 2025

St Luke’s is so much more than just hands on care. While the care is an intrinsic part of our service, there are so many cogs moving in the background keeping our charity running.
Every member of the St Luke’s team works tirelessly to ensure that our services are the best they can be and for some that means working hard beyond their day job.
This coming week is National Apprenticeship Week (10 – 16 February), a chance to celebrate our apprentices at St Luke’s and shine a light on how they are working to develop and strengthen their own skillsets.

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BLOG: Men’s Day Out poster boy Phil is looking straw-some!

The men who take part in our Men’s Day Out are a special breed. They join together with a sense of camaraderie and passion to make a real difference to the lives of local families while highlighting the importance of men’s mental health.

Our very own poster boy, Philip Clench is no stranger to our annual charity walk. Phil has taken part in the walk nearly every year since it started over a decade ago. You may have even spotted him on our posters last year dressed up as a scarecrow.

Local boy Phil has worked at the dockyard for the majority of his career and witnessed the compassionate care St Luke’s provides when we cared for his sister 15 years ago.

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BLOG: St Luke’s closes its b.kinda coffee shop

St Luke’s Hospice Plymouth is sad to announce the immediate closure of our b.kinda coffee shop off the Ridgeway in Plympton.

Unfortunately, financial challenges, including large and rising overheads, have made it challenging to make the coffee shop commercially successful, in spite of all the hard work and dedication of its staff and the loyal support of local customers.

When our commercial arm opened the business 15 months ago, the aim was to explore a new, sustainable income stream with all profits going towards funding the end of life care we provide for patients and their families.

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BLOG: Government regulator CQC rates St Luke’s care ‘outstanding’

Staff at St Luke’s Hospice Plymouth are celebrating a top rating of “Outstanding” from the Care Quality Commission, the official government body responsible for assessing and regulating all England’s health and care providers.
The CQC report, issued this week following their autumn 2024 inspection, acknowledges that St Luke’s services, delivered in the community and at its specialist unit at Turnchapel, are performing “exceptionally well”, with consistently positive feedback received from patients, their families, staff and partner organisations.

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BLOG: For the love of dogs…

At St Luke’s, taking good care of our patients is about paying attention to what really matters to them… and that includes their important relationships with the dogs that share their lives.
Worrying about what will happen to their faithful canine companion can weigh heavily on a patient’s mind in their final days and weeks. Partners, family members or friends are often only too happy to take on a loved one’s pet, but that’s not always possible. That’s when our compassionate teams go above and beyond to help find the right solution. They’ve even been known to adopt a patient’s dog themselves.
Community team specialist health care assistant Marianne Smith stepped in a couple of months ago to find a new owner for patient Christine’s little dog, Roddy. The cute and fluffy white Kokoni had already had a difficult start in life. He was found as a stray puppy on the streets of Cyprus, and he’d been Christine’s loyal pal for around four years.

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BLOG: Fill a box to support our compassionate care

Traditionally, there’s only one ‘Boxing Day’ per year, but that’s set to change when St Luke’s introduces a new concept to its large, city-centre retail outlet in January.
From Saturday 4 January, customers browsing the good-quality, preloved clothing on the rails at our Western Approach charity shop will be invited to ‘fill a box for a fiver’ or a larger one for a tenner. Not only will the scheme save buyers precious pounds as they replenish their wardrobes, it will also help protect the planet by keeping more clothes out of landfill*. And crucially, as with every sale the shop makes, funds raised will support the specialist end-of-life care we provide for local families affected by terminal illness.

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BLOG: How Queen’s Nurse Debbie is doing Al proud

When St Luke’s clinical nurse specialist Debbie Hutchinson received her prestigious Queen’s Nurse badge and certificate at a ceremony in London recently, there’s one special person she would have loved to be with her to witness the occasion. Debbie’s late husband, Al, was always 100 per cent behind her ambitions, encouraging her to go for her dreams, and always over the moon when she reached her goals. Knowing that he would have been bursting with pride was one of the main reasons she decided to go through the rigorous assessment process to become a Queen’s Nurse.

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BLOG: Jenny’s 30 years of making someone’s day a bit better

These days Jenny works part-time, three days a week. In her spare time she loves to go on adventures with her husband, Mark, in the campervan he converted himself.

“I love to travel and my husband flies paragliders, so we often end up going to flying sites around Wales, Cornwall or Scotland, and sometimes abroad to The Alps.”

Jenny doesn’t fly these days, but she especially enjoys long walks with her dog, Dylan the labradoodle, who she describes as “adorable”.

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BLOG: Kim’s celebrating precious memories of Chris at Christmas…with a little help from St Luke’s

Christmas can be an especially tough time when someone very close to you has died. You know the festive season won’t ever be the same without your special loved one.
That’s something Kim Marshall is acutely aware of following the death of his dear wife, Chris, at their home in Hooe, last January, aged 71. But, after receiving personal support from St Luke’s, Kim feels he’ll be able to treat his first Christmas alone as an opportunity to shine a light on Chris’s life, reflecting on the happy relationship the avid Plymouth Argyle fans shared together for 32 years.

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BLOG: Run, Rudolph, Run! School children take on festive fun run for hospice care

Local primary schools have been dashing and prancing around the playground as they take part in St Luke’s brand new Rudolph Run.
The festive fun run is for schools to take part in while raising funds for the care services we provide in the local community.
Schools from across the city and the surrounding area have been taking part in the run, with the children encouraged to get sponsorship from family members, while gaining an understanding of the work St Luke’s does in their community. So far, more than £3,500 has been raised from the Rudolph Run which is enough for us to provide a package of care at home for at least 3 families.

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