The Masonic Charitable Foundation support the North London Hospice with £1,990 grant.
Alice Hunter, Trusts and Grants Officer from the Hospice talks to W Bro Adrian Fox 

Thank you to The London Freemasons! 

The Masonic Charitable Foundation has long supported the work of North London Hospice and the thousands of people we care for every year. We are incredibly grateful to be one of the recipients of The Masonic Charitable Foundations’ generosity. On behalf of everyone at North London Hospice, thank you all for your support!

At North London Hospice, we offer palliative and end-of-life care to anyone who needs it, completely free of charge. We work throughout the London boroughs of Barnet, Enfield and Haringey, amounting to a population of up to 1 million. Our dedicated, specialised, multi-professional teams are on hand day and night, every day of the week, at both our in-patient unit (IPU) and in the community. Our Palliative Care Support Service offers over-night care whenever our patients require support at home. We also offer a range of outpatient therapies and support services at our Health & Wellbeing Centre to help patients improve their quality of life and overall wellbeing.

It costs approximately £13million a year to run our services and, as a charity that receives 40% funding from NHS, we have to raise nearly £8million a year in order to keep our essential services running. This is only possible thanks to the generosity of our friends and supporters, like the Masonic Charitable Foundation, whose exemplary philanthropy directly helps us to offer comfort, security, and peace of mind to our patients and their families.

We especially appreciate your most recent donation in 2020 as the past year has been a particularly difficult one. The Coronavirus pandemic has presented us with a unique set of challenges to our ability to interact with our patients, staff and our wider community of supporters. Our clinical teams are treating increasing numbers of Coronavirus patients and they have reported an increase in the complexity and severity of patients’ health concerns due to a lack of early intervention from other health and social care providers because of the pandemic.

The donation from the Masonic Charitable Foundation not only allows us to continue to run our vital services, but also helps us meet the needs of our patients during this period of heightened concern. For example, with donations such as this, we are able to purchase much needed PPE for our clinical teams, as well as important medical equipment such as another oxygen concentrator to help us treat patients on the IPU who are COVID positive and struggling with their breathing. Your donation is integral to our ability to improve patient care and increase our capacity to help as many people as we can. Thank you for helping us meet our mission to enable our patients to die with dignity and according to their wishes.

Alice Hunter, Trusts and Grants Officer says ‘Thank you for your support at this critical moment in time. Without donations like yours, our work would not be possible – we appreciate the support from the Masonic Charitable Foundation and in particular London Freemasons immensely – Thank you!’