A DAY hospice in Wokingham will be closing following a decline in visitor numbers and volunteers are fearing the future of another site in Berkshire.

The Day Hospice site run by Sue Ruder is currently closed due to coronavirus.

However, a spokesperson has confirmed it will not be reopening after the coronavirus restrictions lift.

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They said: “Our Day Hospice site in Wokingham will not be continuing as attendee numbers have been reducing for some time.”

The charity has said the day services will be kept in Reading and Newbury and patients from the Wokingham area will be invited to these sites.

It added: “We will also keep the Wokingham community services including the Clinical Nurse Specialists, doctors and therapists.”

In terms of the staff, the charity has said the day hospice teams at Wokingham “were all offered alternative roles within the organisation”.

Elsewhere within the Sue Ryder organisation, the Day Services at the Duchess of Kent Hospice in Reading have “undergone a review and as a result will be re-shaped”.

This has caused some volunteers within the charity to express their concerns for the hospice’s future believing the Duchess of Kent hospice is “under threat”.

A spokesperson for the organisation said: "It is normal practice for Sue Ryder to regularly review its services in order to build on progress and learnings and to ensure that we are providing the best care to the most number of people with the limited funds available to us.

"We had begun to look at how we could increase the access and availability of therapeutic care via our day services in 2019.

“The outbreak of Coronavirus meant that we fast-forwarded to the testing of some of the virtual methods that we were planning to look at and we have been very pleased with how those methods have worked for our patients.

"Adding some virtual care into our day service provision at Duchess of Kent is only one of the improvements that we will be making, along with increasing the face-to-face, tailored, therapeutic support for patients provided by our consultants and clinical nurse specialists, supported by our multidisciplinary healthcare team at the hospice.

“The latter is of course on hold for now, as all of our patients are in the vulnerable category and are currently shielding.”

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One volunteer expressed her concerns about the virtual care being suggested.

She said: “How can you show compassion to somebody on a screen?”

She is worried the day therapy will end and this will lead to the closure of the whole hospice.

She added that the Duchess of Kent Hospice was rated as ‘outstanding’ by the Care Quality Commission in November 2019 and questioned “how can you better outstanding?”

The charity added: "We are in the process of shaping the details of the new model, but support from our wonderful team of volunteers will remain an integral part of the offering and please be reassured that our intention is to offer more care to more people, not less to fewer.

"The rest of the services at Sue Ryder Duchess of Kent are not affected in any way."