Towergate Hospice Team of the Year Award

St Columba's Hospice Care: Family Support Team

As a self-styled small team with big impact, the Family Support Team at St Columba’s Hospice Care in Edinburgh has continued to expand and adapt over the past year, offering a successful, blended model of delivery which has improved accessibility for patients and family members. 

They delivered 19% more one-to-one sessions to patients and their family members this year compared to last year (a 60% increase compared to the preceding year), and demonstrated a positive impact on standardised and validated tools used to evaluate their services. As well as their direct work with patients, they have provided training to hospice colleagues and have influenced national guidance and policy.

Judges were impressed by “the sheer range of work that this small team were doing, not just working with bereaved young people and adults but also offering training to nursery and school staff, student nurses and facilitating ECHO sessions for district nurses”. 

A final comment from the judges, who said, “they are a shining example of a team who have gone above and beyond, who have had to adapt and evolve and have embraced integrated team working all whilst being willing to transparently evaluate their impact which has been significant”.

Mountbatten Community Team underwent huge transformation in an already difficult year.

Over the past 18 months, the team was completely restructured to provide a specialist hospice at home, domiciliary care nursing service for people in their last years and at end of life.

This is a great example of transformational change, resulting in increase efficiency and a huge positive impact on the community it serves. This has been achieved by working differently and more efficiently as a team, using a range of different skill mixes and experiences, rather than by increasing the staff numbers or budget.

The changes made at Mountbatten could help other hospices address the demand for more community led nursing services.