Hospice and Palliative Care Volunteers
Volunteers are an important and valued part of a hospice and palliative care team. Volunteers have been involved for a long time in hospice and palliative care. Now many services depend on volunteers to deliver the range and quality of services they provide.
Volunteering can be a very rewarding experience, particularly in palliative care although it can be challenging. Volunteers provide direct and indirect support to care recipients and carer givers in the hospice and also support more people to die in their own homes.
Around 1300 trained volunteers in the Republic of Ireland and 1400 in Northern Ireland support people receiving palliative care and their carer givers.
“We at Foyle Hospice are extremely fortunate to have built up a huge army of volunteers over the last thirty years. At present we have approximately 300 volunteers and we realise the huge contribution that each one of these people make across all of our services and facilities, both individually and collectively. Their experience, input and commitment is invaluable to our holistic approach to hospice and palliative care. We are also very lucky to have built up good relationships with local businesses and companies whereby staff teams will offer a day to help out at Foyle Hospice. Volunteers activities include trustees, driving patients to and from the hospice, catering, gardening, maintenance, complementary therapies, counselling, charity shops, fundraisers and chaplains. Without our volunteers we simply could not do what we do.”
