Hampshire father urges us to support local hospices as demand increases
A Winchester hospice says its experiencing an increase in the numbers of adults and children requiring their services
As we hear a Winchester hospice's experiencing a rise in demand, a father who lost his son is urging us to keep supporting our local charities.
Benjamin Dawkins' son, Teddy, died after a battle with a rare cancer and received hospice care at Naomi and Jack's in Winchester.
He says it's massively important to support our local hospices as they experience a rise in demand of children and adults relying on their services.
He said: "At the time, you are so bound up in the emotions of, this is the last, we don't know if we have days, weeks, months, but we thought it was days.
"So you just want to spend every moment there.
"We had our hands and feet painted, his fingerprint impressions but his health was going down so quickly.
"It just allowed us to not have that noise around us and I think it was more of a reflection afterwards and what a difference that made.
"The thought of if we'd have been in the hospital going through that, it would've made that end process so much harder to deal with.
"I think it gave us this sense of calmness, which probably reflected in us when we seen him slipping away."
Mr Dawkins has since raised money for Naomi House in sponsored bike rides.
He says it's massively important to support our local services.
Naomi and Jack's, who have recently gone through a brand change to reflect their services, say they're currently experiencing a rise in the number of adults and children who are relying on services.
Paul Morgan, Director of Fundraising and Communications for Naomi and Jack's, said: "The challenge that all children's hospices face is particularly acute for us when we recognise that there is an increase in number of children and families and young adults using our services.
"We have a number of beds in the hospice and we also have an extensive range of additional services that we provide.
"One of the challenges we have is that there is a shortfall in the number of paediatric and young adult palliative care nurses in the system generally across the whole of the UK.
"So a fundamental challenge for us is how do we deliver those services; and how do we make sure that we are involved in the lives of people who could be benefitting from the use of Naomi and Jack's, and make sure we're funding those?"
Mr Morgan told us what hospices need.
"We need more of the nursing care that delivers that frontline support to the children and adults in house, but we also need to recognise that comes at a cost.
"So an additional challenge we're facing is how do we raise more money when everybody is feeling the pinch of economic circumstances as they are?
"And how do we ensure that we are a stable and long-serving organisation?"