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Description

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Welcome to St Margarets Hospice in Somerset
St Margarets Hospice is your local charity committed to providing specialist palliative care advice support and respite to patients and their families living in Somerset and parts of neighbouring counties Our care is available for those who have a terminal or lifelimiting illness for example cancer motor neurone disease and chronic lung disease In 2010 St Margarets celebrated 30 Years of Caring for the people of Somerset

Through our medical expertise nursing skills and specialist support services we offer physical emotional social and spiritual care to our patients and their families Bereavement support is also available

Our services are also available to patients where our specialist knowledge skills and expertise will provide relief for their specific illness such as symptom control breathlessness management lymphoedema treatment physiotherapy and occupational and complementary therapies

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History

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Historical information about the formation of St Margarets
Within a year of a dynamic and encouraging presentation by Dame Cicely Saunders in 1979 St Margarets Somerset Hospice Limited was registered as a Charity on January 7th 1980 Furious fundraising activities and events sprung up in aid of the hospice and numerous presentations were given to raise awareness of the need to build an InPatient and Day Care Unit in Somerset

Home Care started in 1982 in Taunton covering a radius of 3 miles In February 1983 the Frank Bond estate donated land to the Charity After four years of fundraising championed by The Friends Association the 16 bedded InPatient Unit and Day Centre in Bishops Hull Taunton opened in June 1987 providing companionship friendship support and access to medical services for the terminally ill

By 1994 the Education Centre opened to promote education and professional development of St Margarets staff and other health care professionals across Somerset and neighbouring counties

The need was identified to provide a greater equity of provision of Specialist Palliative Care in the East of the county and after two years of fundraising an additional 16bedded InPatient and Day Centre opened in Yeovil in December 2003 St Margarets Somerset Hospice Ltd provides InPatient and Day Centre facilities at St Margarets in Taunton and St Margarets in Yeovil Both units are fitted with specialist facilities and equipment are spacious yet homely comfortable yet private and designed to meet every possible need of the patients and their carers

However the biggest growth in our services has been within the community St Margarets in the Community is our service which includes our Community Palliative Care Nurse Specialists CPCNS formerly Home Care Nurses domiciliary visits by our Consultants all supported by the hospices Hospitalbased Palliative Care Nurses and our hospice at home service which we provide in partnership with the NHS and Marie Curie Cancer Care

The name St Margarets was chosen because of the link with continuing care that had been provided by the old hospital and leper colony in Hamilton Road Taunton since 1160 It was named after the patron saint St Margaret of Antioch The old leper house has now been converted into flats having been rebuilt after it was destroyed by fire just a few years ago

In 2000 the fundraising effort was once again resurrected and an appeals committee formed in order to raise pound45 million to build a hospice in Yeovil to help cover the eastern side of the County This hospice was opened December 2003

You would by now think that we had completed all we needed to do but no the hospice in Bishops Hull is now in need of upgrading To read about this appeal and how it is progressing please select the New Build Appeal tag at the top of this web page