We are thrilled to announce that ellenor has been shortlisted as a finalist in this year’s Kent Charity Awards ‘Large Care Charity of the Year’ category, the most prestigious awards scheme in the UK charity sector.

ellenor has been nominated in recognition of its work with the NHS delivering core care services during the pandemic. Additional step down beds were introduced at the hospice to enable the safe transfer of patients from hospital to ellenor hospice in Gravesend recovering from covid and to support the acute hospital to focus on those patients requiring acute care.

At very short notice, we doubled our beds and transformed part of our inpatient ward into a step down facility for the NHS, whilst continuing to provide our usual support to patients with a palliative diagnosis. With support from Supportive Care UK, a team of highly qualified palliative care consultants, we determined to work flexibly with Darent Valley Hospital to offer step down and end of life care to some of the most vulnerable patients including those with Covid-19 and chronic health conditions often complicated by Covid-19 infection.

Our Successes include:

• Establishment of a partnership which enabled us to work collaboratively to offer step-down care and end of life care to hospital patients with Covid19. We have committed to supporting the NHS – Darent Valley Hospital for as long as is required.
• Increased bed capacity at the hospice in Gravesend saving a total of 2,547 NHS Hospital bed days, with 481 patients admitted from April 2020 to 31 March 2022, of those 204 being step down patients from the local hospital. Of those 204 patients, 73 were subsequently discharged to home or a care home. This liberated hospital capacity whilst introducing patient and families to high quality hospice care which incorporated a holistic needs assessment.
• We helped treat both Covid19 patients and those needing urgent NHS treatment, and crucially to provide “buffer capacity” to be used during any surges in the virus.
• The success of this project is being mirrored by other hospices across the UK.

 ellenor Director of Care Linda Coffey says: “As an organisation we are immensely proud of the approach we took throughout the pandemic. We recognised early on that there would be a need to provide additional beds beyond those traditionally provided at a hospice and this foresight enabled us to introduce a model that could be seen as best practice.

 Vision and expertise from specialist providers working together had substantial and universal impact. However, we are most proud of the support it enabled us to give to our local community and the Health and Social Care professionals who work within it.

 This award would provide even more recognition for our wide breadth of services and ensure we grow our profile in Kent reaching out to more people who need our support. We currently care for over 2,874 people every year, caring for all ages, we know there are many more that need our help”

If you would like to find out more about ellenor and our services, please visit www.ellenor.org or call 01474 320007.