With Chinese New Year just around the corner, this year we will be celebrating the Year of the Rat. Whether you’ll be filling yourself with delicious Chinese food, or attending a local street festival, we here at Jessie May have another, more personal reason to celebrate in 2020.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared 2020 as the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife, in honour of the bicentenary Birthday year of the founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale.
Nurses and midwives make up the largest workforce across the world, with 22 million nurses and 2 million midwives respectfully worldwide.
Meet the Jessie May Nurses
Here at Jessie May we have a 13-strong team of passionate and dedicated Nurses who thrive in providing care and support to children and their families across the South West.
Jessie May recognises that the whole family is under huge emotional and physical strain when a child has a life limiting illness. Through our team of dedicated Jessie May Nurses we provide specialist care and support to help alleviate some of this pressure. This support is provided in the comfort of the family’s own home whenever possible from the time of diagnosis onwards.
Why support a Jessie May Nurse?
A Jessie May Nurse costs £30,000 a year, and every penny we get helps our Jessie May Nurses to continue to support our children and families across the South West with a FREE at home care service. A Jessie May Nurse provides:
- Regular, three-hour respite visits, during which a Jessie May nurse takes over sole care of the terminally ill children, allowing parents and siblings a much-needed break. Our nurses are trained to administer medication and carry our other medical procedures, offer independent time for the terminally ill child to play and relax and provide practical and emotional support for parents.
- Family support events, to reduce isolation and improve the quality of life for the whole family. We provide free respite activities to give children a range of experiences that others take for granted.
- End of life care, highly intensive, specialist care at the end of a child’s life, to empower families to give their child the life and death they want for them in the comfort of their own home.
- Bereavement support is offered to parents from the moment a child is accepted onto the Jessie May caseload, we provide emotional support alongside respite visits and our bereavement support continues for up to five years after a child has died.
Follow us throughout 2020
Throughout 2020 we will be celebrating our Nurses here on our website, on our social media pages and throughout the press. Follow our journey on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram using the hashtag #JessieMayNurse and #Nurses 2020.