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Chaplain praying for campaign success
Call ... St Clare's chaplain Elizabeth Ellison backs the Gazette campaign.
HOSPICE chaplain Elizabeth Ellison is praying that people in South Tyneside can help to keep its doors open.
The former minister is calling on people to get behind the Gazette’s c/o St Clare’s campaign.
She said: “If it wasn’t for the public working alongside the fundraising team to raise the money, the doors would be closed.
“And to see the hospice closed down would be a tragedy.”
The grandmother-of-three has been the chaplain team leader at the cash-strapped hospice, in Primrose Terrace, Jarrow, for just over six months.
She is there five days a week to hold services for patients and their families and to spend time in the daycare and in-patient units.
St Clare’s Hospice was opened in 1987 to provide palliative care to the people of South Tyneside with life-limiting illnesses.
It has annual running costs of £2m – £1.4m of which it must raise itself.
But this year it is facing a £50,000 shortfall and the Gazette is hoping to raise the funds through our campaign.
She said: “A lot of people have the wrong idea about the chaplain. They hear that word and automatically think ‘God’, but it’s not like that. I’m there to look after the spirituality of the patients and their families, as well as the nursing staff.
“I did used to be a minister of a Salvation Army church, but I’m not here to push my beliefs on to people.
“I’m just here to look after them.”
The 65-year-old from Jarrow says that the thing she loves most about the hospice is building up a relationship with its users.
She added: “No matter what a person’s religion, I’m here to help. I spend a lot of time with the in-patients and in the daycare just talking to people, and they are always welcome to come and see me.
“Sometimes patients will come to talk to me about things that are worrying them and that they don’t want to worry their families with.
“And the nursing staff are brilliant but they don’t always have time to sit with the patients and talk like I do.
“I love building up a relationship with the patients and their families, and have done to such a degree in the past that I’ve conducted the funeral service when the person has passed away.”
Mrs Ellison added: “At St Clare’s I’m part of a huge team, from the trustees, to the fundraisers and nursing staff, to the volunteers in the hospice and across all the shops, and I’m privileged to be part of it.
“But without the help of fundraisers and people who donate cash, none of this would be possible.
“I see it as an honour to be able to do the work that we do here.”
Twitter: @ShieldsGazVicki
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Tuesday 22 May 2012
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