Prospect Hospice has been providing end of life care to the people of Swindon and north east Wiltshire for over 40 years. Find out more about where we've come from and who we are here.
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.
A survey in 2013 revealed that more than three quarters of the UK population believe in the power of spiritual forces, despite a decline in the popularity of organised religion since the start of the millennium. Essentially then, most people believe in something, even in an increasingly secular society, so spirituality is still a very important part of everyday life for most British people. We know from experience too that more people think about faith and belief when they, or a loved one, approach the end of their lives, which is why spirituality remains an important part of life, and of death, at Prospect Hospice, as it always has been.
Earlier this year we welcomed Neetu Bhardwaj to the Prospect Hospice as our first spiritual coordinator. Neetu is a psychotherapist by profession but has been a prominent member of Swindon’s Hindu community and previously involved in Cruise Bereavement Care as a counsellor and we were delighted that she could bring her skills and experience to Prospect Hospice, in support of the spiritual needs of people who seek our care. “I think spirituality is something much bigger than just religion, and applies to people who often wouldn’t consider themselves to be religious,” she says. “It relates to our values, our beliefs – the way of our being.”
It is hardly surprising that many people question what it is that they do and don’t believe at the end of their lives and, for Neetu, discussing their concerns has already brought a sense of self-understanding and, ultimately, peace of mind for many of the people she has supported since she began working for Prospect Hospice. “People I have met have been understandably distressed about the future,” she says. “I’ve met people who have been anxious about the people they will leave behind. We explore that together, get to the root cause of their fears, always with the aim of bringing them a sense of calmness and acceptance. With one patient I met, it was about helping them to give themselves permission to die.”
Neetu acknowledges that, within spirituality, religion has an important place for many patients and the people closest to them. Part of her role is to work alongside local leaders of all faiths when patients want to see them. For now, she is pleased to be working with our other patient-focused teams to bring spiritual care alongside their general wellbeing.
25 September 2018
23 September 2018
21 September 2018