The 13th Biennial European Association for Palliative Care Congress 2013 was held in Prague at the end of May. This congress is an opportunity for professionals working in palliative care, across Europe and internationally, to come together to share experiences, education and research. 

Queenscourt has been represented at each of the 10 previous congresses and this was no exception. We submitted 17 posters of the work done within Queenscourt and the wider palliative care services of the area. Queenscourt Council is supportive of our attempts to spread wider the work of Queenscourt and everyone who goes from Queenscourt is expected to pay the majority of the costs themselves. 

It is always good to talk to others doing the same sort of work, to exchange ideas and experiences and those who attend always come back enthused, inspired, and motivated to improve and extend the work we already undertake. We heard speakers from other countries speak of the difficulties in providing or accessing palliative care services due to lack of resources and lack of availability of, or limitations on the prescribing of strong painkillers and how people in some countries are still living and dying in unrelieved pain. We believe this is unacceptable, when the knowledge they need is available globally. One of the results of this congress was the production of the Prague Charter to try to persuade governments the world over that palliative care is a human right.

You can read more here, please consider signing the petition!

Thank you to everyone who took part in our Star Trekk walk in May. We had over 500 ladies sign up for the event and the night was a great success! This year we also introduced online booking for the first time, which proved to be very popular! We will now be doing this with more of our events in the future to help make things as simple as possible for everyone wishing to take part.

Please remember that your registration fee for the walk only covers the cost of taking part so it is really important that everyone involved now returns their sponsorship money.

If you've lost your sponsorship form then you can collect another one from our fundraising team, or why not try setting up a sponsorship page online with Virgin Money Giving?

If you enjoyed taking part and would like to know more about other events we have coming up in the future then please take a look at our Events Page. 

On the 16th of May we opened a brand new Queenscourt Shop in Churchtown, Southport. The shop was opened by the Mayor, and a large crowd gathered to be some of the first to look inside. The shop has been a great success so far with donated items flying off the shelves.

We are always looking for more donations to help fill our stores, so if you're having a spring clean this year, please keep us in mind! You can drop of donations at any of our stores - to find out where they are located, and for general information, please have a look at our Shops Page.

Last year we finished work renovating our inpatient unit, modernising and redesigning our ward areas. We also build a brand new refreshment area so that family members and visitors could have somewhere to eat, drink and relax in comfort.

Renovation has continued this year as we have seen the complete redesign of our Queenscourt Connect hub allowing us to combine and improve some of our services in brand new ways. Work continues on the hospice, but there are only a few more steps to go before everything is complete! We'll have a brand new reception area and shop soon and once it's finished we'll make sure to update everyone with some new photos.

Work like this helps us to provide the best experience available to our patients and families and it would not be possible without the generous donations and fundraising we receive!

It costs over £2 million per year to run Queenscourt and we receive less than one third of our costs from the NHS. We rely on your generous donations and every year we are amazed by some of the extreme lengths people go to in order to help. Running a marathon or parachuting from a plane is not for everyone however! We also raise a lot of our money from home collection boxes, our weekly lottery and people donating unwanted gifts and clothes to our charity shops.

Another way we can raise money is through our legacies scheme which allows people to leave a gift to the hospice in their will. These donations are a huge help and allow us to be able to continue to provide all of our services for free to those who need them. If you'd like to find our more please check out our Leaving a Gift page.

We are always looking for Volunteers to help us in the Hospice as well as in our charity shops! If you think you have something to offer then please have a look at our Volunteer Vacancies page to see what roles best suit your skills.

To help run the Hospice we also have many paid staff and are often looking for more people to come and join our team. Any open positions can be found on our Vacancies page. It's updated regularly so if you can't find what your looking for, please check back again soon!