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565 Foxhall Road
Ipswich,
Suffolk
IP3 8LX
T: (01473) 727776
F: (01473) 274717
Email us here

St Elizabeth Hospice's family support team offers practical, emotional and spiritual support to patients, family, friends and carers. All members of the family support team are professionally trained and assisted by loyal and dedicated volunteers.

Family support is available to any person, their family, friends or carers who have been referred to Hospice day care, in-patient care and out-patients clinics.

Family support includes

• Liaison with health, social care and voluntary organisations in the community
• Information and advice regarding welfare benefits and legal matters
• Practical advice on resources and information
• Assisting patients and families with making private arrangements for home care or nursing care
• Liaising with social care services concerning planning for discharges from the Hospice
• Counselling service for patients and their families and carers
• Support groups for patients and families
• Bereavement services
• Activities and interventions with children, either individually or groups
• Creative therapies, such as art or music therapy
• Life reviews, which can improve emotional well being, giving the patient,the opportunity to remember personal significant times and events
• A six week Positive Living programme for patients and their families and carers

Family work may include

• Enabling couples and families to talk about what they are facing and gain support from one another
• Assisting families to make important decisions
• Preparing children, in partnership with their parents, for loss or support with their bereavement
• Negotiating and liaising with teachers and employers.

The bereavement service includes

• Individual sessions with a family support worker, either at the Hospice or at home
• Telephone support by specially trained bereavement support workers
• Bereavement groups such as the Saturday Group - a group held on Saturday afternoons once a month which offers social contact with others
• A Service of Thanksgiving and Remembrance held a year after the bereavement
• One day bereavement workshops for children

Who can refer to the family support service?

• Patients, families and carers may refer themselves
• Professionals within the Hospice multidisciplinary team
• GPs
• Macmillan nurses
• Community nurses
• Social workers in the community