How we’re adapting, and how St Catherine’s is affected by the COVID-19 crisis

We wish to let you know how we’re adapting to the COVID-19 outbreak, and to tell you our plans for the near future.

Like all health care providers, we are greatly affected by the pandemic and are working hard to meet the ever-changing needs and demands of our patients and communities.

We have offered to increase our bed numbers and are preparing to look after patients with Coronavirus who need palliative care if we are asked. We are currently sourcing the necessary protective equipment for this, but we do still need more.

We are reaching out to volunteers who may be socially isolated, offering to help where we can with food deliveries, and keeping in touch as much as possible.

We are still taking admissions on the inpatient unit, and we continue to care for patients with life-shortening illnesses in their own homes; remotely via phone calls and video calls where possible.

We are set to lose £1.2million in the next 6 months which is of course very worrying. Hopefully this will be softened by the Government’s package of assistance for hospices but we don’t know the detail yet.

We are working creatively on possible new plans to boost our income later in the year, to help make up some of the shortfall caused by the closure of our shops and café, and the cancellation of our summer fundraising events. However we are also very sensitive to the fact that so many around us are suffering financial hardship.

The Government has promised to support the important work of hospices over the next 3 months. We have been working with our national umbrella body, Hospice UK and hope to know details of what this will mean for St Catherine’s in a couple of weeks.

We are most grateful for this support remembering that Rishi Sunak, said: “The truth is that we will not be able to match every pound of funding charities would have received this year.” We still expect to have a significant shortfall, despite Government income, that we will have to address.

Thank you so much to those of you who have kindly made special donations of different sorts since the emergency began. It makes such a difference and lifts our spirits.
We thank paid staff who have kindly agreed to be furloughed so that we can regain furlough income from the Government.

We also want to reassure our fabulous volunteers that we miss you enormously and hope that we can see you just as soon as it is safe for restrictions to be lifted.

Please take care of yourselves and your loved ones, and thank you for thinking of St Catherine’s.

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