Mayo Hospice 26 years in the making

BIG DAY Minister for Rural and Community Development Michael Ring, Hospice CEO Martina Jennings, Hospice Chairperson Joanne Hynes and Minister for Health Simon Harris pictured outside the new hospice facility in Castlebar on Friday last for the official opening of the facility. Pic: Conor McKeown

Anton McNulty

“They say it takes a village to raise a child. Well it takes several villages, communities, volunteers, support groups, coffee mornings, fundraisers, donations, marathons, 5k walks and runs, music nights, church gate collections, endless board meetings and many sleepless nights to build a €10 million state of the art palliative care centre entirely from fundraised income.”
The opening comment by Mayo Roscommon Hospice Foundation CEO Martina Jennings summed up perfectly the extraordinary 26-year community effort that culminated in Minister of Health Simon Harris officially opening the new Mayo Hospice in Castlebar on Friday.
Mayo Roscommon Hospice was founded in 1993. Cynthia Clampett, who served as CEO of the organisation from 1998 to 2017, paid tribute to the many people who ‘are no longer with us’ but laid the foundation of the Hospice. Two men who she said would have relished such a day were Dr Bert Farrell and John Tully, founding members of Mayo Roscommon Hospice.
“John Tully was my first chairman and he was my advisor along the years. He established our famous Dublin committee and he brought many very effective new members onto our board. He was constantly thinking of new ways to raise funds and we would have spoken practically every day about the service.
“Bert Farrell was a GP in Westport and told me of the distress of seeing his patients being sent home form hospital with no service in place to support them … In Wales he saw the MacMillan home-care teams and how they were providing a service across a wide spread area and he felt that service would suit our area. He together with John and this small group of people brought this Foundation to a reality.”
The Hospice is seen as a pioneer in palliative care in Ireland, Cynthia Clampett explained. “We were the first Hospice in Ireland to have home sitters, now known as care workers. We were the first to have social workers and family therapists to work with the homecare teams. We also provided funding to develop palliative-care support beds and family rooms in local hospitals long before the Irish Hospice Foundation brought in the hospice-friendly hospital programme.”
She went on to praise all those who helped the foundation achieve this milestone. “The reality is we could not have done this without our army of fundraisers and support groups and excellent volunteers in our shops, our board of directors who gave their time to keep the foundation on track. We certainly could not have done it without the frontline care staff the nurses the doctors the social workers, therapists, care workers – the care they provided to families made fundraising so much easier,” she said.