AN END of life charity caring for Dorset residents has launched a new service to support patients in their own homes.

Weldmar Hospicecare, a specialist care provider, has launched 'Weldmar at Home', a new service providing hands on nursing care and support to patients who wish to be in their own home for the final days of their lives.

The decision to provide the service has been prompted by an increase in demand for at home end of life care during the Covid pandemic, as charity bosses reveals that they have seen an 11 per cent increase in the number of patients who want this kind of care.

A major fundraising appeal has been launched by the charity to fund the new service. The money will go towards creating personalised care packages for patients and to pay carers.

Caroline Sweetland, director of nursing at Weldmar Hospicecare, said: "When patients are living with a terminal diagnosis they need the reassurance that no matter where or how they want to receive care and support, it will be available.

"Patients often require rapid specialist assessments and appropriate care packages being implemented within hours. For some patients, this has been taking days or even weeks which just simply is not acceptable. The Covid pandemic has made this even worse.

"Many of our patients don't have the time to wait for a full package of care to be in place. In the meantime, if their health deteriorates rapidly, they are admitted to hospital instead of being able to stay in their own home. This can hopefully be avoided if an appropriate and necessary care package can be put in place quickly.

"We provide hands on care to the patients when they are in our inpatient unit. Now that we are finding that many people would prefer to stay at home to die, we want to be able to extend this hand on care there too, especially in the last few weeks when it can be so tiring for families.

"We continue to work closely with a number of other health care agencies in Dorset to fulfill out patients' wishes, but we want to be able to ensure that every patient who wants to die at home receives the level of care that they deserve, provided by a charity that they already trust, respect and feel comfortable with."

To donate to Weldmar Hospicecare, visit www.weld-hospice.org.uk