Stewart Marks, chief executive at Rennie Grove Hospice Care outlines the type of care the charity provides to patients in South Bucks and explains why your help is needed to safeguard the service for future generations of local families to ensure every patient can access its 24/7 service as soon as they need it. He writes:

I joined Rennie Grove in February this year and have been extremely impressed by the level of support we receive from the South Bucks community.

This is so important because last year, the specialist Hospice at Home nurses in our South Bucks and Wycombe teams provided care to 715 patients and our children’s Hospice at Home team cared for 33 local children.

All our patients have a life-limiting illness.

We provide family support services too because we know that being there for a loved one who is very unwell can be extremely difficult for those caring for them.

Our aim is to give patients the choice to spend their last months and weeks at home with their families and friends and we achieve this by delivering excellent palliative and end-of-life care, day and night.

In 2016-2017 our model of care meant that 67 per cent of our patients died at home in line with their wishes compared to just 22 per cent nationally.

All Rennie Grove’s services are provided at no cost to our patients but in order to continue providing the same high quality services for all who need our care, we rely on support from our local community to raise in excess of £20,000 every day.

We are so grateful for the help you have given us. We need your ongoing support so we can continue to be there for local families and our website contains plenty of ideas about how to get involved. From taking part in events such as our Chilterns 3 Peaks Challenge in September, shopping at one of our 27 shops or organising an event of your own, there are so many ways you can help.

The website also has info about our incredible 1,500-strong team of Queen’s Award-winning volunteers without whom we simply would not be able to care for the number of patients that we do.

Please visit www.renniegrove.org to find out more about our work and how to make a donation to help safeguard our service for the future.