St Helena Hospice Lottery celebrates raising £8 million for hospice care nationally

Staff from St Helena Hospice are celebrating the fact that its fundraising lottery has raised in excess of £8 million for hospice care since the first draw on 8^th June 2001.

Your Hospice Lottery is run and administered by a dedicated team at St Helena Hospice.There are now a total of ten hospices across the country benefiting from this weekly lottery draw.

Alex Howe, Head of Lottery at St Helena Hospice, said: “We have developed a fantastic model where we can manage the lottery operation for other hospices on a national level, keeping set up and administrative costs to a minimum, so more money can be spent on patient care and all proceeds stay within the hospice world. We want to be able to share our success and experience with hospices that for whatever reason are not able to run their own lottery.

“We could not have reached this fantastic milestone without the valued support of our loyal players who have contributed to the lottery over the last 16 years. Your Hospice Lottery is going from strength to strength with the addition of two new hospice partners in the last year, reaching out to more people in more communities. It’s amazing to think how much can be raised by people simply paying £1 per week to play the lottery.”

Currently over 50,000 numbers are played in the lottery draw each week, with over 15,000 of these recruited in the last year! Your Hospice Lottery is not only making a difference to patients and their families living with life limiting illnesses, but with nearly £1.3 million paid out in prizes it’s win, win!

Your Hospice Lottery provides a valuable, regular income for hospices to continue to offer expert palliative care. The £8 million raised so far could pay for 80,000 visits by a community nurse to patients’ homes, over 260,000 counselling sessions or 16,000 days of inpatient care per patient.

At the start of the year Your Hospice Lottery improved the odds of winning a cash prize with the introduction of an additional 25 cash prizes to the weekly Friday draw. There are now 136 guaranteed cash prizes from £10 to £1,000, plus the rollover prize which if not won goes up by £250 each week up to £10,000.

For more information about Your Hospice Lottery and to pay online by direct debit or credit/debit card visit www.yourhospicelottery.org.uk/st-helena-hospice or telephone 0800 285 1390. Lottery players must be 16 or over.

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Press information

St Helena Hospice Marketing and Communications Office
t: 01206 931464 e: marketing@sthelenahospice.org.uk

NOTES TO EDITOR

St Helena Hospice was established in 1985 and provides specialist palliative care services for patients and their families living in North East Essex. who have progressive, life-limiting illness. The emphasis for this charity is about quality of life and services include Community Services, Therapies and Wellbeing, an Inpatient Unit, Clinical Nurse Specialists, medical services, family support, psychological therapies, spiritual support, physiotherapy and occupational therapy, as well as complementary therapies such as acupuncture, reflexology, massage and Shiatsu. Each year the hospice raises a considerable sum from the local community to maintain the specialist care offered.