Hoxton Health – providing physical, and mental, support and relief, through complementary therapy treatments to older people, disabled people and people with long-term conditions
Liz Hughes, Director of Hoxton Health tells us about the organisation and how it provides physical support to help service users overcome their symptoms, but also is a kind place where they take the time to chat to service users, many of whom are lonely. Liz tells us about the support the organisation has gained from volunteers, and the specific support it is now seeking – someone with financial expertise to join the management committee.
What does your charity do?
We are a small charity offering low cost and free complementary therapy treatments to older people, disabled people and people with long-term conditions living in Hackney and the surrounding area. We are based in St Leonard’s Hospital in Hoxton, and have been running since 1987. We offer osteopathy, acupuncture, postural re-education, massage, foothealth, and cranial sacral therapy.
What are the challenges your service users face, and how does your organisation help users overcome them?
Many of our service users are struggling with pain, lack of mobility, recovery from surgery, falls or hospital stays and/or the impact of disability or disease. We help them overcome their physical symptoms and conditions, but we also aim to be a very kind place, where there is time to chat (many service users are lonely), and where we look after emotional wellbeing as well as physical health.
ELBA has helped us with a number of projects over the years. We currently have a project running with a group of volunteers brought to us by ELBA, who have been looking at our booking system. We do a lot of fundraising to keep our prices low or free and need our booking system to not only be efficient for our service users, but also to be able to provide monitoring to our funders. This had been taking up a lot of staff time, but with the help of our ELBA volunteers we are setting up new systems which will make this work much more smoothly – enabling us to spend more time thinking about the needs of our services users. We are also part of the leadership project at ELBA – as a small charity with three part-time staff, 10 freelance therapists, and seven volunteers (who run our reception), having leadership support has been invaluable. It means having someone who can help from an objective view in thinking through the main issues, and working out how to prioritise – support which is not available otherwise.
Do you have an inspirational story/moment about your work that you would like to share?
We have many very elderly residents using our services – including a gentleman who is 103 who comes to us on the bus to get his toenails cut (as he can’t bend to reach). Helen is a retired secondary school teacher, aged 75, who has lived in Islington got 50 years and is registered as disabled, this is her story:
“I never expected to have cancer; it does not run in my family and I have always been fit and energetic. My mother lived to be 100 and I was confidently expecting to do the same.
My situation changed dramatically when I found two distinct lumps in my breast whilst in the shower. I was swiftly diagnosed with advanced Stage 2 cancer and received excellent immediate treatment from the NHS. This included linking me up with a kind and pragmatic personal cancer nurse who warned me ‘you will find that having cancer is expensive’. She encouraged me to contact Macmillan and to investigate funded complementary therapies.
I quickly found that although I live alone in a small flat, receiving State Pension and a modest Teacher’s Pension, I fall outside of any means-tested assistance. In some ways this feels as if I have put myself into a less advantageous situation because I have always worked and fended for myself. My nurse was so right: the financial cost of my cancer is considerable and challenging – for example taxi fares to the hospital when I was too unwell to travel by bus; a temporary helper to look after me when I came home after mastectomy surgery and needed help day and night; help with cleaning; paying to get groceries delivered; an important private second opinion which saved me from six months of pre-operative chemotherapy; possibly more very regular taxi fares as I embark upon three weeks of daily post-op radiotherapy; and now finding help with greatly needed post-surgery lymphatic drainage which is oddly not available on the NHS.
I was so happy when Homerton Hospital and Madhu at Macmillan referred me to Hoxton Health to find out about concessionary complementary therapy. As soon as I visited the clinic I felt that a beautiful window of welcome and opportunity had opened. This kind of personal care is so valuable in maintaining contact with oneself, living comfortably in the present with awareness and gratitude for life. It is a lovely and understanding bonus that accompanies cancer treatment.
I would like to especially praise the inclusiveness of this organisation – unlike so many other provisions they have not sent me away as ineligible, and they are offering me wonderful and helpful treatments that I would otherwise be unable to afford. I admire their values and their commitment and am happy to provide this comment on the positive difference they are making to my recovery.”
What kind of support are you in need of right now and how might volunteering fit into that?
The main support we are looking for is someone with financial expertise who would be interested in joining our management committee. We meet four times a year, and then there would be a finance subgroup which would meet in between the main meetings. It would be great to have a volunteer from ELBA who was interested in this role – it might suit someone who had an interest in the role of complementary therapy in the health system.
