Prospect Hospice is a charity that supports a community of 300,000 people in Swindon, Marlborough and north Wiltshire, and the villages of Lechlade and Fairford in Gloucestershire. In 2014–15 Prospect Hospice cared for and supported almost 6,400 people, as patients, carers and family members, through a range of services developed to bring care, comfort and confidence at life’s most difficult time. For patients, there are teams of nurses, doctors and therapists, bringing care at the hospice in Wroughton, at the Outreach Centre in Marlborough, in their own homes and care homes and through a palliative care team based at the Great Western Hospital. Carers and family members also access services designed to help their coping when a loved one has accessed our care. Information on Prospect Hospice’s services, all of which are provided free of charge, can be found on their website.
Increasingly the hospice works in close partnership with other care-focused organisations, and specifically with local health and social care professionals, with the shared aim of bringing the best possible care to people in their final weeks, months and years.
Prospect Hospice is a registered charity. Last year it cost more than £7.2M to provide the care and raise the funds to provide the care the patients and their families depend on each year. The hospice receives less than 30 per cent of its income from statutory organisations such as the NHS – the rest they raise themselves.
Since 1980 Prospect Hospice has provided the only dedicated end-of-life care service for the 300,000 people living in its local community – bringing care, comfort and confidence, around the clock, every day of the year.
Vision:
Excellence and choice in end-of-life care for everyone
Mission:
Prospect Hospice works within its community in partnership with patients, their families and organisations to provide and influence excellent care, support and understanding at the end of life.
History
Prospect Hospice has been serving the community of Swindon and the surrounding areas for more than thirty years.
Prospect Hospice exists as a hospice in the community thanks to the determination of founder Reverend Derryck Evans, and those who shared his vision to see the kind of care pioneered by Dame Cicely Saunders at St Christopher's Hospice in south London made available here.
Thanks to local people giving their skills and time, and some initial funding from people and businesses, the then Prospect Foundation was established in 1980. Initially operating a two-nurse, home-based nursing service, as the hospice's reputation grew and the demand for care increased, Prospect Hospice found a base at the Victoria Hospital in Swindon's Old Town, which is now apartments on Okus Road.
Prospect Hospice's reputation was - and is - rooted in the care it provides, and soon the Prospect Hospice nurses were caring for patients beyond Swindon: in Highworth, Royal Wootton Bassett and Marlborough and many places beyond. The more people whose lives were touched by the care, the more people began to show their appreciation for the work of the hospice.
As Prospect Hospice moved into a second decade, it needed new premises, and launched a community appeal, led by its late honorary president David Margesson MBE, for a purpose-built hospice that would become a permanent base. The appeal to raise the £3 million needed to build the hospice achieved its target in 1995 and, later that year, Princess Anne officially opened the new Prospect Hospice site.
Recent years have seen the development of new services, including the Day Hospice, Family Support Team, Therapy Team and Prospect@Home service, each reflecting the hospice's belief that care for people who are dying is about so much more than just their final days.
Prospect Hospice's past was created by people who shared a vision to bring a hospice to the local community – a community whose generosity enables the hospice to bring our care to hundreds of patients and their families each year.