Ulverston's St Mary's Hospice launches Sponsor a Nurse campaign

Miraculously, the dedicated team at the Ford Park Crescent hospice managed to pull it back from the brink - but now they need your help again.

St Mary's Hospice, which offers respite and end-of-life care to patients and their families across south Cumbria, has joined forces with The Mail and The Westmorland Gazette to launch its Sponsor a Nurse campaign.

It costs £3.5million a year to keep the hospice running. Only 22 per cent of that cost comes from the government - the rest is down to the hospice to fundraise.

But in the face of rising running costs the team is struggling and need 500 regular monthly donors to allow them to be able to continue the life- changing work they do on a day-to-day basis.

Vanessa Sims, editor of The Mail and The Westmorland Gazette said: "The care and support the hospice offers families in south Cumbria is absolutely essential.

"This campaign will give the nurses who care day in and day out for those in need the most and will shine a spotlight on their work.

"Becoming a regular donor will make a huge difference. Just offering what you can afford each month will without doubt help a family battling the hardest time of their lives.

"We are proud to partner with St Mary's Hospice on the Sponsor a Nurse campaign."

HERE is the first nurse who the public can support for St Mary’s sponsor a nurse campaign.

Will you be one of the people who sponsor her and the important work she does?

Brogan Morrison is one of the most popular faces at St Mary’s In-Patient Unit — and after almost a decade in healthcare it’s easy to see why. 

Brogan, 27, recently graduated from university after completing her FdSc Nursing Associate Degree, having started at St Mary’s as a health care assistant.

She said: “It was really hard work, but I’m proud of myself. I wouldn’t have got through it without the support of my colleagues at St Mary’s — especially Kim Everett, who completed the course and graduated with me.”

“I come from a long line of NHS workers so my career choice became obvious from an early age because I wanted to follow in the footsteps of my family. I did two years at Furness College before getting my first job in healthcare at 17. 

“Working at the hospice is more than just a job, it is a vocation and I feel it is a privilege to be able to provide person-centered care to our service users and their families.

"Sometimes people come to us at what can be a really difficult time, and we can make it much better for them. I think everyone deserves a good death — whoever they are and from whatever background — and there are things we can do so that people get to make their own choices and feel as comfortable and dignified as possible.”

Brogan was the face of a social marketing campaign earlier in the year to attract new staff, needed because St Mary’s was introducing a Fast Track service, which is offered to people who are assessed to be within 12 weeks of death.

Its function is to support people at home to die where that is their choice, and it provides support for washing, eating, dressing etc up to four times a day depending on assessed need. This service started to take patients in late May 2022 and delivers care to up to five people at a time. 

The #BeMoreBrogan campaign was successful in attracting a raft of applicants looking to get into healthcare, but also had another unintended positive — some amazing feedback from families of patients Brogan had cared for.

“It was lovely — people commented on the posts saying they could remember me taking care of their relatives, and not just medically but the little things we do, brushing someone’s hair or doing their nails, and that their relatives had really appreciated me," she said.

"To receive that kind of feedback means the world to me.”

If you can afford to give a regular donation please click here to sign up.