If you’re in the last year of life, or caring for someone who is, it can be challenging and isolating. Our Befriending Service is here to support both you and your loved ones.
Please note that this service is not for people living with dementia. However, we do offer a separate Community Dementia Companions Service.
This service offers flexible support for patients and carers, with visits from our volunteers tailored to your needs. Whether it’s social activities like coffee, walks, or joining a local group, or practical help like picking up prescriptions or shopping, we’re here to help.
Our goal is to reduce isolation and provide companionship through a supportive relationship with a volunteer.
After a referral, we’ll call to discuss your needs. Once we find a suitable befriender, we’ll visit you at home to get to know you and explain both the possibilities, and the boundaries of the service. We aim to match you with someone you’ll get on with.
The Hospice will stay in touch to ensure you’re happy with the match and make improvements if needed.Â
All our befrienders are volunteers who are compassionate, good listeners from all walks of life and are dedicated to making a difference. While they offer companionship, they are not clinical professionals and cannot help with moving, medication, or personal care.
All befrienders are carefully selected, interviewed, DBS checked, and fully trained.
Anyone who’s towards the last year of life (whose primary diagnosis isn’t dementia), their main carer, or on occasion, people who have been recently bereaved and need support (this isn’t counselling though).
You don’t need to be an existing patient of the Hospice.
We may be able to take referrals for people who have a secondary diagnosis of dementia.
Service users need a health and social care professional to make a referral for them. This could be a Macmillan Nurse, District Nurse, Social Worker, care co-ordinator, social prescriber or any health and social professional to have contact with you. Â
For more information about East Cheshire Hospice’s Befriending Service, contact our Sunflower Living Well Centre on 01625 665685 and a member of staff will be in touch.
Thank you so much for choosing to support East Cheshire Hospice. You may never know how much your gift means, but we know that it will make the world of difference to our patients and their families.
East Cheshire Hospice, Millbank Drive, Macclesfield Cheshire, SK10 3DR | admin@echospice.org.uk | 01625 610 364
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