Happy birthday to us!

After such an amazingly busy 50^th anniversary year in 2021, it would have been easy to think that as we celebrate our 51^st birthday, things would be quieter and that the hospice would have much less going on.  But, I’m excited and pleased to say that couldn’t be further from the truth…

It’s right that anniversaries are a time to stop briefly and take stock.  They are a great opportunity to look back and reflect on what’s gone well – the memories that have been created, and everything that has been achieved.

Whilst the last twelve months certainly brought plenty of challenges as we continued to care and support people during the pandemic, I couldn’t be prouder of the fact that we’ve also carried on moving forward at pace.

Teams across the hospice have continued to innovate and improve services, being brave and bold and reaching out to new communities who have historically found it harder to access palliative and end of life care.

Collaborations have been key, whether that’s staff and volunteers working hard across teams to ensure the very best, compassionate care for patients; local healthcare professionals who have worked with us to improve that care; or funders and supporters who have enabled our work to happen.  It’s been an amazing year and most importantly our patients and those closest to them have remained at the heart of everything we’ve done.

As well as the evolution of our services, we have also been carrying out work to ensure our Little Hulton hospice remains fit for the future needs of patients too.  We are also heading into the next half a century of care with an exciting project to build a brand new hospice in Heald Green. The new site will be on land adjacent to our current hospice there, and is being developed as our old building is no longer fit for purpose – parts are more than 150 years old and not conducive to modern hospice care.

It’s ambitious, but it’s absolutely necessary.  If we don’t do this urgently, we’re in danger of having to close or reduce services in the near future.  The project has been carefully planned to sit alongside our recently innovated services and wide range of community and outreach provisions, which will together mean we are able to remain an organisation of choice for people from across Greater Manchester and parts of Cheshire.

We’ll be sharing more on this exciting project in the next few months, so please watch this space.

Huge, huge, thanks for all your support over the last year, and for joining us on this exciting journey as we start the next phase of St Ann’s history.

Over the last 51 years something which has remained true is that we couldn’t do what we do without the community that supports us.  Thank you so much for everything you’ve helped us achieve – and continue to help us do for our patients and their families, now and in the future too.