Community Engagement News Update July 2024 – Dec 2024

Community Engagement’s quarterly update

From July to Dec 2024, our Community Engagement team welcomed new staff members David Kelly, the Community Engagement Coordinator who will be working on raising awareness of Rennie Grove Peace Hospice Care & developing new partnerships and Clare Neale, the Compassionate Communities Assistant who will be overseeing the current Compassionate Café and Support Hubs partnerships we have.

The team along with Fiona Hobbs who oversees the Compassionate Neighbour project has been working on building up our attendance to events, meeting with groups, organisations and developing partnerships.  In the period the team had over 120 meetings & events and engaged with over 3500 people to raise awareness of Hospice Care, volunteering, provided training and let people know about our Compassionate Communities projects.

Some of the highlights in the period were:

• Attending a range of OPALS events in St Albans, Rickmansworth, Leavensden, Abbots, Borehamwood and Potters Bar to raise awareness of what hospice care really is
• Talks at Watford Cassio Townsguide, Radlett U3A, W3RT Getting together about our services and the power of volunteering
• Attending events like Abbots Festival, Carpendens Park Care Home and Older person St Albans wellbeing days to raise awareness of our services
• Workshops with “Communities 1^st” and “Say it with a Smile” around Death, Dying & loss, Bereavement support and Future planning (ACPs)
• Health & Wellbeing events like the One Vision Cancer awareness, Potters Bar Health & Wellbeing, Borehamwood Cancer awareness, Cancer support with HAWA, Watford FC ‘Hornets Together’ Mens Mental and Mcmillan Cancer support events
• The engagement with faith organisations to understand some of the barriers, the team attended the One Vision Faith & Health equalities conference and the Bushey Interfaith Forum – ‘Faith at a Loss’
• To help with volunteering recruitment we attended the St Albans Showcase and Three Rivers Volunteers Fair to highlight all our volunteering opportunities
• Attending the VSFCE Annual Conference and the Bereavement Care Conference can us a chance to highlight our support and look at what partnerships we could develop further

The Community Engagement team works to build up community partnerships within the local community to: 

• Stronger relationships and reach under-served communities
• Develop joint projects & initiatives, and share expertise & resources
• Grow referrals into and out of our patient services
• Challenge myths and improve knowledge about hospice care
• Encourage volunteering and promote fundraising activities
• Raise our profile in the community and the wider hospice sector