Here’s something that might surprise you… St Luke’s is not somewhere you’ll come to wait to die. St Luke’s is about living.
The people with terminal illness we care for have more need than ever to make the most of every moment. While every patient is as different as the care they will receive, they all have this in common: their care will be about life.
We also train other healthcare providers in Sheffield to care for their own terminally ill patients, and our educational influence extends far beyond Sheffield’s boundaries. For over 50 years, the example of our pioneering work and the outstanding expertise of our staff have been benefiting hospice patients both across the UK and internationally.
You can read more about St Luke's in our Who we are, what we do and how you can help leaflet.
Our patients, our care, our people
We look after people over 18 from across the Sheffield region, with all kinds of terminal illnesses, including end stage neurological, heart, kidney and lung conditions, cancer and HIV. Last year, we helped around 1,800 patients – some of who came to the hospice but many more were looked after at home by our team of community nurses, who help treat and alleviate pain, support and counsel and in some cases, help patients to die at home, if that’s what they want. Most people want to die at home, and we help to enable that to happen if we can. It’s not just patients that we help either – we extend support, counselling and practical help to family members too.
And the people who help us…
Everything we do is dependent on over 250 amazing members of staff and a phenomenal team of over 700 volunteers, all of them giving time, expertise and effort. Besides that, we have a legion of supporters and donors who raise money tirelessly to make it all possible. In fact, of the £12 million it takes to deliver our services this year, we need to raise over £9 million of that from donations… and that means a lot of running, cake-baking and pie-eating help from our friends. Every customer at our charity shops helps too, adding to the income we receive from our retail outlets across the city.
How many people do we help?
Last year, our community team made 6,286 visits to patients in their own homes across Sheffield, helping to support them and the other healthcare professionals caring for them. Meanwhile our In Patient Centre provided 24-hour specialist palliative care for around 300 people.
We also saw over 6,800 attendances to our Patient & Family Support service last year, with 522 receiving clinical outpatient, clinic or day-patient support and 6,295 for 'social prescribing' activities. We supported over 500 bereaved relatives with over 2,500 sessions of counselling and support.
Each year, our work touches the lives of around 6,000 people.