With the rising cost of living set to continue, the drive to buy from charity shops has never been stronger, which is a good thing for us. At the same time, however, we’re seeing regular cash donations cancelled on a weekly basis as people begin to struggle financially and review their spending habits. We completely understand this.

Here at St Leonard’s we’ve just seen our most successful trading day in history across our 12 charity shops in and around York. We’ve felt the impact of the cold weather and people were coming into the shops to buy winter coats and jumpers which are a little bit higher value than summer outfits. As we become more reliant on our retail income, this is a good thing. Like many charities across the country, during the pandemic, we saw general donations reduce.

Palliative care services were a vital part of the emergency response and here at St Leonard’s we were able to shift our services towards caring and supporting more people in their homes, with the help of other services.

At the start there was a risk that our role as a care provider could go unrecognised by Government. Some hospices weren’t seen as essential to provide front-line NHS services initially and it’s perhaps true to say many felt overlooked.

Emma Johnson is chief executive of St Leonard’s Hospice in York. PIC: Duncan Lomax

With the closure of charity shops, paused fundraising and loss of volunteer’s support, there was an immense strain on our income and our staff. Hospice UK successfully lobbied the Government to get some emergency funding. At the same time, we were dealing with our own personal difficulties and the emotional upheaval for the families of our patients. It was an incredibly difficult time.

Our teams dealt with the speed of change well and continued to offer care to people at home, expanding our existing Hospice at Home service almost overnight to cope with increased demand and support our colleagues in acute Trusts and primary care services to prevent admissions to hospital and facilitate discharge where appropriate and necessary. This service remains extremely popular for people receiving end of life care who wish to stay at home and alongside our bereavement support service, is our area of greatest growth.

We know that, if given a choice, the vast majority of people prefer to die at home. However, a significant proportion still die in hospital. So, we’re working really hard with the hospital’s discharge liaison team and a whole host of other health professionals in the community and primary care teams, to change this.

It’s often just about someone being brave enough to have that tender conversation with a patient and their family about their prognosis and their future wishes and preferences.

Whilst these conversations aren’t happening, many people are in hospital thinking they just don’t want to be there. We see about 50 people each month in our Hospice at Home service and 95 per cent of them wish to die at home, so we’re working with a whole multitude of services across our health and care system (including other voluntary sector organisations) to make this happen.

Looking to the future, we’re focusing on positive changes and during Hospice Care Week we’re looking to recruit more staff. We want to continue to provide in-patient care and bereavement support for families, open more shops and grow our Hospice at Home and Single Point of Contact (telephone support line) service, offering continued support for patients and families.

Emma Johnson is chief executive of St Leonard’s Hospice in York.

How hospices can help people die peacefully at home - Emma Johnson, St Leonard’s Hospice in York