Welcome to Cornwall Hospice Care and to Cornwall!

We’re very much looking forward to welcoming you to our county and to our charity and thought you might like to find out a bit more about our home and our hospices before you join our team.

Cornwall is situated in the far south-west of the UK, like a foot reaching out in to the Atlantic. The county is almost surrounded by sea and its only border is with Devon as you can see from this map. Just off Land’s End are the beautiful Isles of Scilly.

Cornwall’s famous for its surf, beaches, pasties and cream teas – we eat our scones jam first and with our famous clotted cream on top. It’s a very popular holiday destination and the population here can triple in size during the summer.

A word about Cornwall’s roads….

There’s one main spine road through Cornwall and it’s the A30.  It’s predominantly a dual carriageway – we don’t have a motorway – and it forms part of the route from Mount Edgcumbe Hospice in St Austell to St Julia’s Hospice in Hayle.  It’s extremely busy, especially in the summer when there’s huge numbers of tourists driving through.  At the moment there’s also a very slow section where it’s single carriageway that’s at last being dualled.  You can read about the work here https://nationalhighways.co.uk/our-work/south-west/a30-chiverton-to-carland-cross/.

You need to leave at least an hour for journeys between our two hospices.

This is a good moment to also talk about Cornwall’s other roads. There are smaller B roads, big enough to allow cars to pass each other, but there are also many much smaller lanes first constructed when there were few vehicles and horses and carts.  The trick with these is to keep your speed down and note every passing place you go by so you know how far you might have to reverse for a vehicle coming the other way.  Tourists are often unused to these tiny roads and nervous to go back!  You will also be sharing the lanes with large agricultural vehicles and machinery.

Once a major mining capital, the main industries now are tourism and agriculture and we’re also building a reputation in the aerospace world.  The county has a long history and many ancient sites remain including the Men-an-Tol, the Hurlers and Tintagel Castle. The county had its own language, much like the Welsh and Scottish, but it died out and is now only spoken by a dedicated army of people.  You can read more about Cornwall’s history here https://www.historic-cornwall.org.uk/a-brief-history-of-cornwall/.

Sadly, despite the beauty of its coastline that attracts many visitors, Cornwall is home to some very deprived areas too. Second homes have vastly reduced the number of affordable properties available for local families and the infrastructure is under enormous pressure.

We’re looking forward to welcoming you to Cornwall and to our charity and here with the first of many welcomes is Gina Starnes, our Clinical Director:

Cornwall Hospice Care is a 24/7 Cornwall-based healthcare charity and we offer end of life support for people with terminal illnesses. Our clinical teams and volunteers support patients and their families, carers and friends at Mount Edgcumbe Hospice in St Austell and St Julia’s Hospice in Hayle, through our Community Services and via our Lymphoedema specialists.

You can take a look round our hospices before you join us by watching each of these short films:

Hospices are very special places. They were founded by an extraordinary visionary, Dame Cicely Saunders who felt strongly that the dying needed as much care and support as the living. “You matter because you are you, and you matter to the end of your life. We will do all we can not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die.”   You can read more about Dame Cicely here https://www.stchristophers.org.uk/about/damecicelysaunders.

The hospice ethos is distinct to that of a hospital, your time with us will look and feel very different to any other wards you will have worked on. To find out more about this and how to prepare, listen to our special podcast with Ally Hardman, our Specialist Nursing Lead.  Click on the green play button on the player below to listen.

You’ll meet a lot of people while you’re with us but your first point of contact will be Janet Barnie or Andrea Chadwick, depending on which hospice you’re going to be based at.  They’ll help you settle in and will be able to answer your questions.  You’ll also be supported by our Human Resources team who’re based at Mount Edgcumbe Hospice.

You’ll be part of our one team and you’ll get to know everyone in and round the wards from the nursing teams, to the chefs, housekeepers and administrators. You’re also likely to meet other staff who work from the hospices. There’s our Lymphoedema Specialists who can read about here https://www.cornwallhospicecare.co.uk/our-community-services/therapy-team/lymphoedema/

We also have a team of therapists and Community Services, all of which you can read about here https://www.cornwallhospicecare.co.uk/our-community-services/

We’ve got a staff intranet that’s full of useful information, including key documents like our Freedom to Speak Up Policy. Janet and Andrea will show you how to access this. You’re a member of our team so all advice and support is there for you.

To fund the care we provide, there’s a wider team within our charity busy raising money.  They include our fundraisers and our retail department. We have 25 shops, donation centres and a warehouse and lots of fundraising events going on across Cornwall through the year. Find out more here https://www.cornwallhospicecare.co.uk/shop-cornwall/ and https://www.cornwallhospicecare.co.uk/support-us/