Like you I'm sure, we'd hoped the pandemic crisis would have all been over by now. Today, now that some restrictions have eased we could all be forgiven for thinking we're through the worst.

But for the nurses, patients and their loved ones of Wigan and Leigh Hospice, I'm afraid we're still very much in the thick of it. And, even though the numbers of COVID patients have thankfully come right down, our challenge here at the hospice has become much, much greater.

It's going to take a long while yet before our fundraising events and activities, and our shops, are all back to full strength. I have to tell you that, at the moment, our charity is losing around £2,192 every single day just keeping services open.

To keep our care going for the rest of this year we simply must call upon good people like you in our community. And so, I hope you understand why we are asking for your urgent help today.

These last fifteen months have seen the very best in all of us. Our team are exhausted, but they have kept going because they know the value of the unique care that only we can provide. And yet now we are seeing sharply rising numbers of local people needing our care, and they're very poorly.

Your support today will help us to keep running all the services these patients will need. For those requiring complex medical care in their final days we just want to ease their pain where we can, give them peace, dignity and hopefully the chance to see their family and loved ones one last time. A donation of £38 will pay for an hour of compassionate, expert nursing care at our hospice.

Your help will keep our specialist community team supporting patients in their own homes, assessing their needs and helping people to live the best life they can with their condition. For many patients, this contact may be the only one they will have with the outside world and its absolutely crucial. A gift of £112 would enable a home visit to a patient from our Specialist Community Nursing team.

And, with your help, we can continue to provide counselling, emotional and practical support to those who have lost someone precious to them often without the chance to say goodbye properly. A gift from you today of £62 would cover the cost of a counselling session for someone struggling with their loss and grief.

The pandemic has hit our borough and the whole North West very hard. COVID remains a real worry, especially some of the new variants we've been told about. But I want to reassure you that there is real hope for the future, our hospice staff have demonstrated how resilient we are and we're ready to continue adapting to meet the needs of the people of Wigan & Leigh. Right now, all our lives are hard, I appreciate and respect that. But for people who face spending their last days, still often away from their families, it's devastating. Whatever you can manage to donate today will help us to reach them, to care for them, when they need it most. Please, give what you can.