Local charity Treetops will be representing a modern-day adult hospice in a television feature on 50 years of the hospice movement in the UK, due to be aired on ITV Central News.
The feature will be broadcast over three nights in mid- January on the news programme and will look at how and why hospice care began, its history and how much has changed over the years.
Treetops Hospice Care was chosen to represent an adult hospice which provides emotional support and nursing care. Filming has taken place in the hospice’s Day Care Unit where a team of nurses, health care assistants and volunteers provide physical, emotional and social care to people who have been diagnosed with a life-limiting illness.
Treetop’s Hospice at Home service – providing nursing care for people in their own home during the day or night – will also feature.
Amongst those filmed and interviewed was director of clinical services, Phil Shreeve:
“We are all incredibly pleased and proud to have been chosen to feature in the show and to reflect exactly what hospices have to offer the local community today.
“There’s a misconception that hospices are gloomy and depressing places where people just come to die. This is a chance to dispel those myths and really show what a hospice can offer.
“Hospices have a vital role to play in helping people to live well and die well in their local community. This is achieved by supporting those living with a life limiting condition, their family and loved ones in conjunction with the wider community infrastructure. We have the opportunity to work hand in hand with the NHS as it strives to deliver more care within the community and our strong ethos of person centred care offers a great foundation for building compassionate communities.”
Treetops, based in Risley, was founded 30 years ago by Cally Cheetham, following her personal experience of caring for relatives suffering from cancer. Last year, the hospice provided palliative care and support to 1,756 people across Southern Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.
Treetops provides all its services for free including a Support and Information Service, a Day Care unit based in Risley, Hospice at Home nurses and Therapeutic Services.
The name ‘hospice’ was first applied to specialized care for dying patients by physician Dame Cicely Saunders, who began her work with the terminally ill in 1948 and eventually went on to create the first modern hospice—St. Christopher’s Hospice—in a residential suburb of London.
