At Prospect Hospice, we provide outstanding, personalised and compassionate care for everyone in Swindon, Marlborough and the surrounding areas affected by a life-limiting illness, completely free of charge. For more than 40 years, we’ve been a dedicated, non-hospital, end-of-life care service for patients and their loved ones - around the clock, every day of the year. Our mission is to ensure that anyone can access the best possible expert care whenever and wherever they need it – whether at the hospice or in their own home. As a charity, we only exist because of the generosity and support of our amazing local community.
Find out about the range of end-of-life care services that we offer to patients and their families. These delivered free of charge and are designed to provide compassionate, personalised support during every stage of a life-limiting illness in every kind of care setting, to anyone who needs it.
We couldn’t do what we do without considerable support from our local community. Find out all the different ways in which you can support Prospect Hospice, including fundraising, volunteering and purchasing from our shops. All contributions are greatly appreciated and enables us to deliver care that is free of charge to our patients and their families.
Our café sits at the heart of our hospice in Wroughton and serves a range of delicious home cooked meals to suit all tastes. Whether you're looking to catch up with friends over lunch or relax with coffee and cake, our Heart of the Hospice café has you covered.
Whether shopping with us in person or online, or donating your pre-loved goods, we thank you for supporting us through our shops where you help to raise around £2million a year for Prospect Hospice.
We pride ourselves on being a great place to work and we're always looking for outstanding people to join our team at the hospice across all areas of the charity.
Prospect Hospice is the leading provider of education and training for end-of-life care in Swindon and north Wiltshire. Working closely with you, our colleagues within partner organisations, we want to ensure that the very best care is available to everyone facing the end of life. This is why we provide education and development opportunities, all of which aim to encourage learning and build confidence in end of life care and support.
You may remember that this time last year, our dad, Chris Marlow, shared his story with you in a letter like this one. We wanted to let you know that sadly dad died at the beginning of this year at home, still being supported by Prospect Hospice, and surrounded by his family.
One of his final wishes was to raise even more money for Prospect Hospice. He was so proud of the help he gave to the raffle last year. So to carry on his legacy, as his daughters, we wanted to share our story with you, letting you know of the support the hospice has given not only to our dad but to us as a family too.
Like many people, we were nervous when dad said he was going to the hospice. Before then, we’d always been a little uncertain of the hospice. To us, it was a place of sadness. How wrong could we have been?
Dad absolutely loved it there. He was very open with us about the care he was receiving and spoke so highly of everyone at the hospice. He opened our eyes to all the services that were available and taught us so much about hospice care. He knew they were always there for him and it was comforting for us to know that should he have a bad day, he had someone else to talk to who could support and care for him, understanding what he was going through.
One of the best things for us when we spoke to anyone at the hospice was that they all knew what was going on with dad. We didn’t have to start each conversation by giving them an update. They already knew everything and that meant we were able to speak about the things that were maybe troubling us, but that we perhaps didn’t want to talk to family and friends about. They made that time all about us and what we needed, which was incredibly helpful.
We were planning to go to the carers days to find out a little more but unfortunately that was cancelled due to the pandemic. That seems to be all that was cancelled though, because right throughout the pandemic, despite everything, dad’s care continued and so did ours. Karen, from the hospice’s family support team, was on the phone for us whenever we needed her – she almost feels like part of the family now.
Karen has been absolutely fantastic. If we’re honest, we don’t know what we would have done without her. She supported us in a way that we can’t put into words. She’d even offer to have a word with other members of the family she was supporting and give them a gentle nudge if they were annoying us. Thankfully we never needed that but it was so good to know someone understood. We’re so grateful to Karen for everything she’s done for us.
We both deal differently with these things. One of us much prefers to talk and see people face to face (when we can) and the other finds it more useful to have the odd text and some information sent in the post so it’s there when we need it. The hospice adapted to both of us and didn’t offer us a ‘one size fits all’ approach. We knew this was how they were working with dad, making sure his care was personalised and tailored to his wants and needs, but we were surprised and reassured when they did the same for the care they gave all of us as a family.
From the first time we met with everyone at the hospice, the care was consistent. While dad missed the face to face interaction (he loved to talk!) the care and support continued for him. Dad encouraged us to talk so, for us too, the support was consistent and, with everything going on in the world, they were still always there for us.
The hospice was with dad to the very end and we can’t thank them enough for the support they gave to him, and us, throughout that time. While dad may now be gone and we are learning to live without him, his legacy lives on. We’ve pledged to make dad’s final wish to raise more money a priority for us and we so hope that you can too.
Prospect Hospice is an amazing local community charity that has meant so much to our family. By buying some raffle tickets you are helping to support their work, so they can continue to care for all the patients and families like ours that need them so badly when facing such a difficult time.
The hospice is still working hard to raise enough to cover the £1m funding gap they foresee for 2021 caused as a result of Covid-19, so your support remains incredibly important.
We’re hoping that this raffle is a huge success because we know first-hand just how essential the care and support of Prospect Hospice is. Each book of tickets for £25 could pay for a nurse’s fuel for a whole day, allowing them to visit patients like dad, in their own home, so every book sold is vital.
Please help us to make this raffle the biggest ever – our dad would have been so proud. Thank you again for your fantastic support for our local hospice. We wish you the very best of luck!
Sam and Zoe Marlow
Proud daughters of Chris Marlow