Hospice Care Week – What I’ve learned supporting hospices with PR 

Helping to get hospice stories in the media has been a real highlight for me since joining the High-Rise team three months ago.

I had very little knowledge of hospices before. None of my family have benefited from hospice care and I had a limited understanding of the services they provide.

But having met and spoken to staff, volunteers and patients and heard their stories I now have more understanding of the importance of the difference end-of-life care makes. Hospice Care Week has been highlighting this in the past week.

Media interest for Barbara takes off!

An amazing fundraiser Barbara Thackray ran the Altrincham 10k in September. This was in memory of her sister who was cared for by St Ann’s Hospice. She achieved a PB at this race and came first in her age category! 

BBC North West Tonight came to film Barbara and her story was also published on BBC Online. It was lovely to be part of the team supporting her at the race and meet her in person.

Barbara’s story was published across 19 local and national publications and broadcast media. This documented her preparation for the race, her achievements afterwards and reasons for taking on such an incredible challenge.

National coverage for charity fundraiser

Over the last few weeks I’ve also had the opportunity to get to know Belinda Neild. She is a hero runner who ran the London Marathon dressed as a pencil. She raised over £5,000 for St Ann’s and secured the Guinness World Record title as the fastest item of stationery!

In the week running up to the marathon I secured coverage of Belinda speaking on BBC Radio Manchester. She was also interviewed by Mike Bushell on BBC Breakfast and was filmed for many of the BBC’s social media channels. 

Ashgate Hospice supports people across North Derbyshire. They provide excellent end-of-life palliative care and many services that the community surrounding them has access to.

We work with Ashgate to provide additional support to their communications team. BBC Radio Sheffield has interviewed Ashgate Hospice twice this month talking about how the community was getting behind their ‘Go Pink for Ashgate’ week. Ashgate’s Head of Fundraising was also interviewed to discuss the impact of the cost of living crisis on hospices and how this will affect their vital services.

Hospice Care Week emphasises the crucial nature of hospices to communities. It’s support that happens year round and not just during one week but it’s great that during the week hospices get a bit more recognition for the work they do.

I look forward to hearing more inspiring stories in the future!