Our volunteers are gradually mobilising after the lockdown. Recently, the Friends in Modbury held a most successful stand at the Modbury Fair,
It was Lynette Ball’s dearest wish to witness her son, Stuart, marry his partner, Amy. But with a terminal diagnosis and Lynette’s health deteriorating rapidly, time was running short.
That’s when the St Luke’s nursing team caring for the 60-year-old mother and grandmother at her home on Plymouth’s Barbican pulled out all the stops to make her dream come true.
Halfway up a wild and wet Mount Snowdon, George Fletcher felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around to find a little girl aged around seven or eight waiting to hand him a £10 note.
She wasn’t the first or last to approach the 85-year-old from Ivybridge as he embraced the enormous challenge of climbing the highest mountain in Wales, accompanied by his son Marc, and family friend Mark Buckham, to raise funds for St Luke’s.
As modest as he is kind, Andy Campbell would never describe himself as a ‘hospice hero’, but having reached the milestone of 35 years’ dedicated service with St Luke’s – making him the team’s longest serving current employee – it’s a title that could not be more deserved.
Halfway up a wild and wet Mount Snowdon, George Fletcher felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around to find a little girl aged around seven or eight waiting to hand him a £10 note.
She wasn’t the first or last to approach the 85-year-old from Ivybridge as he embraced the enormous challenge of climbing the highest mountain in Wales, accompanied by his son Marc, and family friend Mark Buckham, to raise funds for St Luke’s.
Behind the doors of St Luke’s you will find an intricate web of volunteers keeping our charity running.
This week is Volunteers’ Week (3-9 June), a chance to celebrate the wonderful team of volunteers that keep the cogs of St Luke’s turning. From working in our fleet of shops, to volunteering at our specialist unit, our volunteers are the backbone of our organisation.
When Marc Fletcher and his best mate started making plans to climb Mount Snowdon in memory of his late mother, Eve – shining a spotlight on the care she received from St Luke’s Hospice Plymouth – they asked his father, George, if he’d like to take the train up to meet them at the top and perhaps walk back down.
But the 85-year-old was having none of it. If they were climbing Snowdon – the highest peak in Wales – then George wasn’t going to take the easy option. For him it’s not only a way to honour his wife of 55 years, but also to raise funds for St Luke’s so that other local families can benefit from the compassionate doorstep urgent care service he had no idea existed until they experienced it themselves earlier this year.
A premier south west car dealership is helping to keep St Luke’s Hospice Plymouth’s expert urgent care services on the road.
The charity’s nursing teams clock up more than 80,000 miles each year, delivering their specialist end of life care direct to the homes of patients all over Plymouth, West Devon, the South Hams and East Cornwall, so it’s vital for them to have transport they can rely on.
This week Roger Young’s recently opened Suzuki showroom, based at Saltash, handed over the keys to a brand new Ignis hybrid four-wheel drive hatchback to bolster the charity’s fleet for the next six months.
Green-fingered volunteers have been busy transforming the gardens at our specialist unit.
Ten volunteers from Plymouth and South Devon Community Forest generously gave their time and skills to clearing out the overgrown gardens at Turnchapel ahead of our new transformation works that will be commencing soon.
The team, who are employed by Plymouth City Council, operate across Plymouth, Dartmoor National Park and the South Hams, providing funding and support to plant trees that will help with biodiversity loss, increase pollinators, capture carbon and mitigate the effects of climate change.
St Luke’s has thrown open the doors of its spacious new charity shop in Ivybridge, welcoming customers keen to donate their good-quality, unwanted items and snap up bargains in aid of local hospice care. There to cut the ribbon at the store’s official opening on Monday 7 May 2024 was the town’s Mayor, Councillor Alan Spencer, who was joined by shop manager Dee Spiller and community nurses from St Luke’s at home team.
The focus for this year’s Hospice UK Dying Matters Awareness Week (6-12 May) is how we talk about death and dying. Senior palliative care nurse Cathryn Goodchild, lead clinical educator at St Luke’s, asks why people shy away from the “D” words and explains why correct language matters.
