Family support
Coping with illness, loss and change is not easy for anyone. We offer a confidential service to support patients and families with the practical and emotional aspects of coping and living with a life threatening illness.
This may involve practically planning for the future, for example what the patients personal care needs maybe and how they will be met, applying for benefits, establishing where the patients preferred place of care and death is and their final wishes.
Emotional support maybe needed with adapting to a changing lifestyle both for the patient and their family. Sometimes it can help to talk with someone who is not part of the family and who is a professionally trained and skilled listener and able to offer support with the challenges that living with a life limiting illness can bring.
A range of services can be accessed through our family support team such as music therapy, art therapy, complementary therapy, spiritual care, emotional support and bereavement support. Family support is available to any person, their family, friends or carers who have been referred to Hospice.
Art therapy
Working creatively can prove deeply rewarding often when it is least expected. Many feelings, difficult or even impossible to express in words, can find release through picture making or sculpture: whether of shock, fear, anger, loss or sadness; and equally of hope, faith, gratitude, courage, love and joy.
At the Hospice, art therapy sessions take place in the art therapy room or at a patient's bedside. Alternatively, the art therapist may be able to visit a patient at home. The art therapist also works with carers and relatives.
Music therapy
Music therapy is about the use of music to help and support people. It has been proven to be very effective in difficult situations when all other forms of communication have failed.
The aims of music therapy may include increasing communication and expression, providing emotional release and relaxation and comfort.
The Hospice has a music therapy studio, which contains a range of accessible instruments including a piano, xylophone, drum kit, guitar and various percussion instruments which are available for patients and families to use.
The music therapist is able to work in a range of ways including providing live music as relaxation, improvising music with or for the patient, song writing, choosing and listening to music with the patient, life review through music and making CDs.
The music therapist can provide individual or group sessions in a variety of settings such as the music therapy studio, at the patients bedside in the Hospice or in the patient's home.
Spiritual care
Spiritual care and support is offered to patients, families and carers by the Hospice chaplain and a team of volunteers from a range of spiritual and faith backgrounds including Christian, Buddhist and inter-faith. Some volunteers are ordained whilst others are lay.
At the Ipswich site the chaplaincy team provides spiritual, not religious, care offering support to all patients and their families whether or not they have a faith. There is a room at the Ipswich site called Reflections which is available to patients, families and staff for quiet, meditation, prayer or conversation and contains books and resources representing a range of faiths.
The chaplaincy team visits patients in day care and patients and their families on the in-patient unit on a daily basis for prayer, communion or just a chat. The chaplain also visits patients in their own homes.
Children and young people
The illness or death of a close family member can be a painful and even lonely experience for a child or young person. It can be hard to talk with parents or close relatives who are upset, and friends maybe reluctant because they do not know what to say.
Parents can be supported when difficult information needs to be shared with children. Advice and resources are available to both parents and children to help families talk about what they are all facing. Individual work with children and young people can also be offered.
From time to time one day workshops are held for groups of bereaved children so they can meet others who have had similar experiences to talk, remember and also most importantly to have some fun.
Bereavement support
We offer bereavement support to anyone who was close to the person who has died - family members including children and grandchildren, carers or friends. Support will be available as long as you need it. We have a team of dedicated and experienced family support workers and bereavement volunteers who support people either individually or through the regular bereavement groups held at the Hospice. In East Suffolk our support workers offer a bereavement support service either over the phone, in groups, at the Hospice or elsewhere, and in people's own homes.
In Great Yarmouth and Waveney bereavement support is provided by the bereavement services at the James Paget University Hospital or by Cruse Bereavement Care.