Hayley Beswick has been working at St Ann’s Hospice for four years, starting as a palliative care nurse and she is a now a ward sister.
Based at the Heald Green hospice site, Hayley knows first-hand the need for the new building and how much of an impact this will make on all aspects of the care and support St Ann’s can give those they help.
Hayley says: “I knew I wanted to go into palliative care, and particularly hospice care, because my nanna was cared for at a hospice and I was just amazed at the care from the nurses, and all the staff there.
“Hospice care is what nursing is about for me. Throughout my career, I was always told how St Ann’s was known for the compassionate care it provides and I’m so proud to be part of the St Ann’s family.
“Working at a place like this, as a team, you go through things together, you see things that no one else sees. It’s really quite a tough job emotionally and mentally. You do become very close with each other as a team. I’ve found that throughout the whole time I’ve been here, people have come and gone, as people do, but the team feeling stays the same.
“But the building we work in was never purpose-built and its age is making it impossible for our team to keep providing the care and dignity patients and their families deserve.”
St Ann’s Hospice’s Build It Together campaign is raising the final £2 million that the charity needs to build a much- needed new hospice in Heald Green.
This will replace their current Victorian building, which is in urgent need of replacement as there are continual and costly repairs. The current building is no longer fit for purpose and presents a real risk to the future of St Ann’s Hospice.
“From my and my colleagues’ perspective, the building itself is just not working hard enough for us,” continues Hayley. “The corridors are really narrow, so whenever we have to move a patient around, if they are in a bay and become poorly or get an infection and we need to move them to a more private area, it’s really difficult manoeuvring beds through the corridors.
“We also don’t have any piped oxygen. We have to use oxygen cylinders, which we then have to carry down to the patients from a room on the far side of the building. This is the only place I’ve worked that doesn’t have piped oxygen. If we’ve got an emergency, someone has to run to the other side of the building to carry the oxygen back; it’s just not ideal.
“If you envisage a hospice, you think of a lovely room, patio doors and a nice garden to sit in if you want to. I think a lot of patients and relatives who haven’t been here before are quite shocked at how old the building is, and it’s up to us to make them feel the warmth and welcome.
“This new building is going to totally change all of that. There will be more private rooms with patio doors, so that if the patient wants some fresh air or the family wants to take them out, they can just open the patio doors and do that safely.”
There will be 21 single patient rooms, and two three-bed bays in the new hospice site. Each room will have double doors opening out to an outdoor terrace and beyond into the landscaped gardens, which include courtyards and sensory planting.
“I already know that my favourite part of the new hospice is going to be the private rooms with the patio doors that open into the garden” says Hayley. “Most of our
patients want to get some fresh air and it’s really difficult moving a bed around the building to get to the current garden.
“We also have birthdays and weddings and all sorts of special moments celebrated with patients and their families at the hospice. It will be so much nicer to have these better facilities for those moments.
“I’m so excited that we are so close to starting work on the new building, it feels like it has been so long coming. The team are super-excited to start to see things happening. It’s going to give the staff and the patients such a boost because they all know how hard we are trying to campaign for the new building. We’re all very excited for it.”
The Build It Together campaign, which launched in June 2022, has already raised more than £900,000 and St Ann’s is urging people across Greater Manchester to get involved.
To find more information on how you can help St Ann’s Hospice with their Build It Together appeal, visit
