Salford Mayor helps celebrate our Little Hulton hospice anniversary

By News Team on April 9, 2019

The Ceremonial Mayor of the City of Salford, Councillor Ronald H Wilson, and Mayoress, Pat Wilson, joined staff, volunteers and patients from St Ann’s Hospice to celebrate a very special anniversary in our organisation’s history.

The special birthday gathering took place at our Little Hulton hospice site in Salford, to mark 40 years since the building opened.

In April 1979, we opened the doors of our second hospice site in Little Hulton and started caring for patients there.  The opening was the result of a huge Greater Manchester-wide fundraising appeal, which led to the amazing local community raising a massive £600,000 for the second St Ann’s hospice site.  Our Heald Green hospice had already opened in 1971, and Her Royal Highness, Princess Anne, came to officially open the Little Hulton hospice site in May 1979, welcomed by many of our staff, volunteers, patients and families. We’ll be celebrating in lots of different ways this year to mark this special 40th anniversary, and we were pleased to welcome the Mayor and Mayoress to St Ann’s to kick start our activities.  It’s a very exciting few years for the hospice as we’re ramping up to the 50th birthday of St Ann’s as a whole in 2021 – it’s a real privilege that our team is in a position to ensure the hospice remains fit for purpose and able to provide care for patients and their families well into the next century too. Though hospice care has changed so much since the hospice first opened, our ethos and values remain the same.  I’m proud to be part of a team that is committed to providing truly holistic care, treating each patient as an individual and responding to their own personal needs and wishes.  As we look back at what has gone before, and plan ahead to ensure St Ann’s remains fit for future generations of patients and families too, we never lose sight of the core values that make us what we are. Thanks so much to everyone in the local community for the support they’ve given the hospice over almost half a century.  We simply couldn’t care for our patients without you.  Thanks so much for all you do for us. Eamonn O’Neal, Chief Executive of St Ann’s