A Corby hospice has secured Freemasons' grants to boost their COIVID-depleted coffers and help keep their home-care community service going.

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Corby's Lakelands Hospice's Hospice at Home service has been boosted by donations totalling £5,000.

The money will be used to fund nurses providing much-needed care for people in the last four-weeks of life, a service that saw demand double during the first lockdown.

Sue Hall, Lakelands Trusts and Grants Officer, said:

It's fantastic and we're really grateful. Every year I put in an application to the Corby Masons, and we normally get £500. This year we received £2,500 from the Provincial Grand Charity of Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire which was match-funded by the Masonic Charitable Foundation (MCF).

Mrs Hall has had first-hand experience of the Hospice at Home service, firstly when her father, John Little, died in September 2014, and again when her husband, Andy Hall, passed-away in March 2016 after being diagnosed with lung cancer.

She said:

The support you get is brilliant - knowing that they are there, helping you do the right thing. I made that grant application from the heart because I know what it means and the difference it makes.

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From left, Lakelands Bubble Paul Marlow (head of fundraising), Tracy Glen (Nurse manager) and Sue Hall (Trusts and grants officer) together with WBro Dr Kevin Williams and WBro James Spence

The service, which started in 2010, receives referrals from all GP surgeries in Corby and is available 365-days a year. Since April, 59-patients have been helped with 175-nights of care received.

WBro James Spence, Senior Group officer for Corby Masons, said:

I'm very pleased to be supporting Lakelands. It's not just for Corby but the whole area and we support them and they support us. We would like to thank Lakelands for supporting our members.

On behalf of the Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire Provincial Grand Charity, WBro Dr Kevin Williams, himself a former Corby GP, said:

"It is a charity that we have supported for many years. We give support on a national and local basis particularly for hospices up and down the country especially at this time."

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The Lakelands Hospice at Home team
(photograph courtesy of Northants Telegraph)

The hospice does not receive any NHS or government funding and is entirely funded by charitable donations and support from the local community.

Head of fundraising, Paul Marlow, said:

We are so grateful for the wonderful support from the Freemasons organisation. The hospice costs in excess of £545,000 per year to meet the needs of those living with life-limiting illnesses such as cancer, COPD, heart failure, multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease. It costs around £230 a night for the service but we have been able to keep up with demand which doubled during the first four to five months of lockdown.