St Francis Hospice Dublin: A Social Entrepreneurship Story

Our recent Tree of Life remembrance ceremonies saw us returning to our familiar tradition of gathering with members of our community on the grounds of St Francis Hospice Blanchardstown and Raheny to remember our loved ones who are no longer with us as we enter the Christmas season.

The return of our community to the hospice grounds was certainly a cause for celebration. In another sense, it prompted me to reflect on all the ways in which our community – including individuals and families, community groups, corporate partners, and our elected government representatives – has remained very much with us throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

During those uncertain times, St Francis Hospice Dublin received unwavering support from our entire community, enabling us to continue providing, and even expanding, our services. We looked after 8% more patients and their families in 2021 than we had in pre-pandemic times. We developed new programmes, along with innovative ways of delivering our palliative care services.

The steady support we received enabled us to begin planning for a much-needed redevelopment of our Raheny in-patient unit. Designed nearly 30 years ago, our 19-bedded facility, made up of 7 single rooms and 3 four-bedded rooms, was state of the art in its time. However, standards and needs change over time, and the pandemic only accelerated the urgency for our shared rooms to be replaced by single rooms for the safety, comfort and dignity of our patients and their families. Demographic changes in our catchment area population have also increased the need for additional beds.

Thanks to both government and community support, the capital debt for the building of our Blanchardstown hospice will shortly be cleared. This is an amazing achievement in just 12 years, considering the construction and fit-out costs of €24.5m. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, during a recent visit to St Francis Hospice Blanchardstown, remarked, “St Francis Hospice is part of the social fabric here in Dublin 15, at the heart of the community. Almost everyone knows someone who has availed of the care it provides.?It does incredible work, which is without parallel. I commend St Francis Hospice on its plans to clear the capital debt and know that the community will once again rally to the cause. The Government will ensure that it is adequately funded so the fundraising efforts can concentrate on expansion and new services rather than funding basic needs.”

The funding of our core services, which will accompany our redesignation as a Section 38 organisation in the coming months, will be a welcome development as it will provide St Francis Hospice with a more certain and sustainable funding model. In addition to this increased government support, we will continue to depend upon community and corporate support to allow us to innovate, build new facilities, develop new services, and deliver quality improvements and extra benefits for our patients and their family members. Crucially, it will allow us to focus on the redevelopment of our Raheny hospice facility.

We look forward to the construction of our new 24-bed in-patient unit in Raheny to include new mortuary, underground carpark and clinical support facilities with bridge links to existing hospice buildings. Plans have been drawn up and an application for planning permission will be made early in 2023. This new facility will help meet the needs of our growing and ageing population in a safer and more patient-centred way.

The granting of Section 38 status recognises the role of St Francis Hospice in providing core healthcare services on behalf of the HSE as the sole provider of adult specialist palliative care services in North Dublin city and county, and inpatient palliative care for residents in the surrounding counties of Meath, Louth and Kildare.

It is important to recognise that St Francis Hospice Dublin remains committed to the spirit of voluntarism and to our ethos and core values which have carried us through 33 years, from a fledgling service operating out of a Porta-cabin to a fully-fledged, comprehensive specialist palliative care service for the people of North Dublin and surrounding counties.

St Francis Hospice Dublin moves into the New Year with energy and optimism, secure in the knowledge that our proven model of social entrepreneurship, underpinned by our provision of a high quality palliative care service to our community, along with the stalwart support of that community in return, and governmental support through the Section 38 redesignation, will enable us to meet the financial challenges of this new building project.

In the immortal words of Helen Keller, “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.”

- Fintan Fagan, CEO, St Francis Hospice Dublin?