Legal & General partner with Hospice UK for Hospice Care Week
Howard Lake | 12 October 2017 | News
FTSE 100 insurer Legal & General is supporting Hospice UK through this week’s Hospice Care Week (9 – 15 October 2017). The partnership is designed to raise awareness and understanding of the work carried out by hospices.
The partnership includes an event at the Legal & General offices in Hove to celebrate everyone involved in producing and supporting hospice care.
Legal & General staff have raised thousands of pounds for their local hospices over the years, and provided other voluntary work.
The company has over 9.5 million customers in the UK.
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Graham Precey, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Legal & General, said of their Hospice Care Week collaboration: “Our new partnership aims to help raise awareness and understanding of the work hospices do and the very important role they play in our communities and in individual lives…
“This new relationship supports our wider commitment to our health and wellbeing programme for our colleagues that encompasses diversity and inclusion, good mental health and support for carers.”
Emily Lever, Corporate Partnerships Manager for Hospice UK, the national charity for hospice care, added: “Every year, hospices across the country provide incredible care and support to more than 200,000 people who are living with terminal illness, and their families.
“But there are still one in four families who are not getting the care they need at the end of life. That is around 100,000 people who are missing out. Hospice UK is thrilled to be working in partnership with Legal & General to help make sure that hospice care is there for every person in need.”
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Public understanding of hospices – survey results
The promotional work of the partnership is timely. A new survey conducted in advance of Hospice Care Week has found that only three (57%) in five Britons know that hospice care is free.
Hospice care is provided free of charge to people with terminal and life-limiting conditions. Charitable hospices cover the bulk of costs of providing this care through a mixture of charitable fundraising, such as community events and charity shops. Hospices also receive some statutory funding.
The survey also highlighted that 31% of UK adults think hospice care is available only in a hospice building. Less than half of UK adults (45%) are aware that hospice care is available in community settings such as at home and in care homes. In fact only a small percentage of hospicecare (14%) is provided in hospice in-patient units.
Despite the lack of awareness, the findings of the survey by leading pollster ComRes – which was commissioned by Hospice UK – suggest that the UK public views hospices very positively.
More than nine in ten people (92%) said they are “an important asset to their community” and more than eight in ten of those surveyed (82%) agreed that hospices are “the best way to help people die peacefully and with dignity”.
In addition 37% of those surveyed said they would be willing to volunteer for a hospice and 14% said they would be “very willing” to work in a hospice.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.