We are very proud to say that the final total raised by BN5 magazine and Henfield Village for St Barnabas House Hospice in the Big BN5 Christmas Draw and in collection boxes during the Henfield Christmas Evening was an incredible £3,701.04!
On Friday 6 January, Olivia Pugh (from Hamfelds, representing Henfield Traders), Carol Eastwood (Chairman, Henfield Community Partnership) and myself visited St Barnabas House Hospice in Worthing to present the cheque and have a look around the hospice. We were greeted by Wendy Bardsley, Community Fundraising Manager, who has been our contact throughout the fundraising process and attended the Henfield Christmas evening with her colleagues to support our efforts.
Having never visited St Barnabas we had some preconceptions of what a hospice environment would be like. I imagined it would be something between a pleasant care home and a hospital, comfortable but with lots of medical paraphernalia and the urgency of a high-care environment.
We were met with something very, very different. The state of the art hospice building (opened in 2011) on the outskirts of Worthing is set amongst beautifully planted grounds. To explain simplistically, the building is the shape of a child’s drawing of a sunshine. It has a central hub with an open atrium garden, with the rays of the sun containing the rooms for the patients, each with level access to their own garden area. Wendy explained; “If our patients want to feel the sunshine on their faces, or even the rain, they can. Having these lovely private areas where they can go outside and hear the birds and the wind in the grasses brings pleasure and peace. Every step of the journey at St Barnabas is about them and making life comfortable for themselves and their family.”
And peaceful it is. The busiest part is the reception area, which is large, bright and airy with a coffee shop for visitors. Nurses know that when a patient comes to St Barnabas this is a very important time in their lives and they need to make it as stress free and happy as it possibly can be. A separate patient entrance leads to a very quiet area, with a flowing sculpture of transparent birds suspended along the ceiling. Paintings and views from large picture windows to the gardens give a feeling of a very loved building. Although the corridors have the usual furniture of a hospital, there is no harsh lighting and there is no ‘smell’ about it as a hospital can sometimes have. There’s a small chapel with tall etched windows, brought from the old St Barnabas building, showing the story of the dragonfly. It’s a lovely story often used to explain death to young children, a story of the water bugs transforming into beautiful dragonflies.
There are 20 beds at St Barnabas and space for 18 day-care patients who attend the hospice for respite. Now St Barnabas cares for 1,500 patients each year, 700 more than were cared for at the old hospice, in total they’ve helped 30,000 patients since they started in 1973. With Hospice at Home becoming an important part of St Barnabas, even more local people are being looked after by the team of nurses and specialist staff, all this with just 33% of the hospice’s finances coming from government funds – they need us more than ever.
We are very pleased to say that the incredibly generous donations by local businesses and all the money donated by you when you bought tickets for the Big BN5 Draw has gone to help the work of a truly special place with some incredibly dedicated nurses. We know the money will be well spent, providing this exceptionally high standard of care and allowing dignity and peace at a time it’s needed the most. Thank you all.
Emma Osman