Trusts

We are very grateful for the significant support we received from Trusts and Foundations over this past challenging year - a huge thank you to all who responded to our funding applications for support.

Here for our families

We particularly appreciated a grant received from the Scottish Government Wellbeing Fund which enabled our Counselling and Bereavement team to move quickly and to put in place appropriate measures to continue and expand the bereavement counselling services while working remotely from home. All our face-to-face counselling and bereavement support visits had to be stopped in March 2020 due to COVID-19. Nonmedical staff were either furloughed or, where possible, asked to work from home. At the same time our patients and family members were experiencing increased stress as a result of: health anxiety; deterioration caused by disease progression; isolation due to

The funding we received enabled us to provide:

• Online information on bereavement for family members following a death • Secure devices to enable confidential remote sessions to be provided by staff/volunteers working from home • A subscription for a secure online database to replace paper records • Additional counselling and bereavement support volunteers • Additional training and support to enable counsellors to meet the required professional standards for online/remote working • A COVID memorial event in the future.

shielding, and major changes to the registration of deaths and to the organisation of funerals. We wanted to be able to continue providing our counselling and bereavement support services to patients with incurable illness and their families at this difficult time. The Wellbeing Fund grant has ensured that we have been able to continue working throughout the pandemic with our patients and their families to help resolve the issues which cause them concern, including grief, loss, anxiety, panic attacks, difficult family relationships, and depression, visit stcolumbashospice.org. uk/family-support