IPP Bryan Vernon's Charity Cheque Presentation

Hospice in the Weald

Originally established in 1980, we provide specialist palliative care advice and clinical support for people with terminal illness, their families and carers. Our Hospice is based in Pembury and comprises a 17 bed In-Patient Unit and a Hospice Day Service offering a range of treatments, complementary therapies and clinics. Our new Hospice in the Home service provides 24 hour advice and support to the local community and all nursing and medical services are offered alongside family support, bereavement counselling and spiritual care. All our services and activities are supported by a skilled and dedicated team of volunteers. No charge is made for these services which are provided on the basis of need rather than ability to pay.

We are very proud of the fact that we are a teaching Hospice and our Education Learning and Development Service provides many courses and training sessions for health and social care professions and others. These include rotational placements in specialist palliative care approved by the London & KSS Deanery for the postgraduate training of doctors.

Kent Air Ambulance Trust

The charity exists to relieve sick and injured people in South East England and surrounding areas by providing a Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) and Air Ambulance Service for the benefit of the community.

The Kent Air Ambulance Trust, a registered charity, was established in 1989, to provide an air ambulance service for the people of Kent. 2005, saw the introduction of doctors on board, and in 2007, the Trust expanded its service and launched a second helicopter to cover the counties of Surrey and Sussex.

The Kent, Surrey & Sussex Air Ambulance Trust's (KSSAAT) state of the art Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) Aircraft operates during daylight hours, 365 days a year, out of our bases at Marden in Kent and Redhill in Surrey and are capable of delivering our crews anywhere in our region in under 20 minutes flying time. Occasionally weather prevents the aircraft flying, so our crews also have rapid response vehicles to maximise their availability. Each aircraft is crewed by an experienced Pilot, Doctor and Paramedic, who are trained in advanced pre-hospital care, which gives them the knowledge and skills necessary to assess and stabilise critically ill and injured adults and children. This means that a number of specialist clinical procedures that are normally only available in the resuscitation area of an emergency department can be delivered to patients at the scene, such as, general anaesthesia, advanced pain relief and for a small number of patients surgical interventions. Effectively, what we aim to do, as far as possible, is bring the emergency department to the patient and then take them quickly and directly by land or air to the most appropriate hospital best able to treat their injuries.

Our teams are also able, where necessary, to provide inter-hospital air ambulance transfers.

These services are available to everyone who lives, works, or is travelling through the region and is provided free of charge to those patients that require them.

We work very closely with South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SECAmb) responding to over 1500 emergency calls a year. The normal operating area of our charity is therefore defined by the region that SECAmb covers and includes Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and a small area of North Hampshire; this region has a resident population of 4.5 million people.

The air ambulance is deployed by a specialist paramedic working on the HEMS desk at the control centre of SECAmb, who screens all 999 emergency calls coming into the ambulance service to establish if the air ambulance would be of benefit to the patient.

Kent, Surrey & Sussex Air Ambulance is one of 18 independent Air Ambulance operators in England and Wales and relies almost entirely upon the generosity of the public to keep the service going. Every penny of the approximately