Willow Burn Hospice Family Support Service

General information

Willow Burn Hospice treasures the lives of people whose illnesses are no longer curable, enabling them to achieve the best quality of life.
Our local hospice services provide a friendly and supportive environment in which everyone feels welcome.
*Now accepts over the phone payments*
Willow Burn Hospice opened in 1989 as a result of two remarkable women, Irene Mortimer and Valerie Davison, who identified a local gap in the service of hospice care and with the support of the Secretary of State set up Day Hospice Care with the help of funding from Macmillan. The Willow Burn Day Hospice service was expanded in 1991 to include In-patient services and up until 2006 these were the only beds available in Durham.

With its history, Willow Burn Hospice continues to treasure life and provides vital community resources, delivering a positive contribution to the community. Having achieved CHKS accreditation in September 2011 Willow Burn Hospice is well known locally for its commitment to service quality, compassion for the people that it serves and integrity to the community and to the staff and volunteers.

Willow Burn Hospice once set the precedent for hospice palliative and end of life care in County Durham. Visionary plans are now progressing to build on these foundations. Our aim is to ensure services are sustained in suitable and accessible facilities for the Derwentside and County Durham community for generations to come.

Most members of the local population have been touched in one way or another by the hospice, either by direct or indirect contact with the facility. This gives the community a real sense of local ownership which is evident in all aspects of the service from patients and their families, fundraising contributions received by the hospice and in the numbers of volunteers gifting their time, skills and knowledge to the facility.