Compassionate Communities at St Catherine's Hospice

Our Compassionate Communities approach at St Catherine's Hospice aims to empower people and communities in Central Lancashire, to help themselves and each other, through death, dying and loss.

We want people to feel as supported at the end of life, as they do in the rest of their lives.

Community support for someone who is living with serious illness, loss and grief, is so important and can make all the difference. People need their neighbours, colleagues, friends and family around them. We want to help connect people and empower our communities with the knowledge, skills and confidence to reach out to others who may be going through a difficult time. 

Talking about death doesn’t make it happen any faster. In fact, it is never too early to start discussing what you’d like to happen at the end of your life. Death and dying is everyone’s business, so we can all do our bit to help. We can support and encourage people to talk about it, at one of our training and awareness sessions.

Compassionate Conversations

People often want to support others who are going through difficult times of serious illness and loss, but don’t know what to say. Our free two-hour awareness-raising session helps to build the skills and confidence to enable open, honest and sensitive conversations around end-of-life, loss and bereavement, while identifying ways to help and support others. Free to community groups and volunteers, please get in touch with the team to find out more, or to book a session.

Talk and Tours

We recognise that hospice, palliative and end of life care can be a bit of an unknown, and so can offer Talk and Tours for small groups. Come in to our beautiful site in Lostock Hall, and meet with hospice staff and find out about the care we deliver, look around the inpatient unit and ask questions to clinical and non-clinical staff.

Talk and Tours are suitable for anyone who wants to learn more about hospice care and services, such as community groups, health and social care professionals and teams working in the third sector, or VCFSE (Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise) sector. We can also host larger-sized groups by breaking into smaller groups for the inpatient unit tour. If you’d like to arrange a visit, please email us at communities@stcatherines.co.uk.

Last Days Matter

A free half-day training course for anyone who’d like to know more about death and dying, how to make plans for the end of your life, what to expect when someone is dying, what happens after someone dies, and how to best support those left behind who may be grieving and need help and friendship. Sessions run most months and all are welcome to book on.