St Helena Hospice provides a wide range of specialist palliative care services, without charge, for people living in North Essex who have advanced, progressive, life threatening illness. St Helena Hospice is a registered charity (No. 280919-R).

The hospice was established in 1985 to meet the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of people with advanced illness and to support relatives and friends and those professionally concerned in their care.

It is a centre of excellence in the care of the dying where training and education is also available to those involved with the provision of palliative care. It has firm links in policy and practice with the statutory voluntary and private services whilst always acknowledging its own responsibility in providing quality specialist palliative care. It therefore seeks to work closely with and complement all agencies and individuals involved in the care and support of patients and families.

We have just recently launched a new logo for the Hospice.  The logo has been designed to appeal to a wider audience in our community, with a fresh, more contemporary feel. From the feedback we receive from our patients and other medical professionals who work with the Hospice, we know that we need to spread the word about our work wider in the community. In short, we need to make the Hospice as accessible as possible for people diagnosed with a terminal illness in North East Essex. To help our campaign to make ourselves more accessible, we have developed a new logo and strapline to try and create a better awareness of the Hospice as a whole.

As we have seen the Hospice develop and change to meet the needs of our patients, we need to develop the message we send out to our patients, their families, medical professionals, supporters, funding bodies and volunteers. It is import to let people know what services we can offer and how we are using the money generously donated by the community year on year.

The old sun logo was often confused with the sunflower image used by the umbrella hospice organisation, Help the Hospices. In this way, St Helena did not have its own special brand awareness in the community. There are many other organisations also using the sunflower as their logo, including the famous WI ladies who developed their 'Calendar Girls' calendar to raise funds for Leukaemia Research. The new design illustrates a range of meanings and emotions relating to the cycle of all our lives:

• The dandelion clock is made up of many seeds. Each seed can be thought of as a patient surrounded by family, carers, volunteers, staff of the Hospice and the wider community. Each seed, although one entity, collectively plays a role in a community of seeds; donor, volunteer, nurse, doctor, fundraiser, patient, bereavement worker, child, parent, etc.

• The individual seed floating away signifies the death of a patient or someone leaving the service of the Hospice. The seed is the beginning of something new and can symbolise the beginning of a new life or rebirth to those with religious beliefs.

• The dandelion clock is the last phase of this dandelion flower's life; when people use the service of the Hospice, they are also experiencing the last part of their life.

• Dandelions have healing qualities and are used in complementary therapy.

The change to St Helena 's branding will take place over a period of time as we will use up old stock before ordering new and of course, we are being very careful to keep costs to a minimum. In response to many volunteers' wishes, the shops will have new signage and a fresh coat of paint, to try and re-establish our presence in the high street. Corporate sponsorship is being sought to pay for the major changes to our signs, etc. For stationery and other daily consumables, we have been able to secure new prices that will save the Hospice money.

Day Centre Services in Clacton-on-Sea The Day Service Centres offer a wide range of therapeutic and diversional services, including:- Acupuncture Massage Shiatsu Occupational Therapy Physiotherapy Breathlessness Clinic Art Therapy Hairdressing Carers' support     Manicure and Beauty treatments Counselling and emotional support Watercolour classes Reminiscence Benefits advice Palliative medical treatments Jacuzzi baths Dietary advice

For more details Log on to our newly designed website www.sthelenahospice.org.uk which was kindly designed for free for us by Ravensloft.co.uk.