This service provides coordinated specialist palliative care and nurse visits to patients usually in their own homes and links with other services including GPs, palliative specialists and District Nurses. We have five nurses on staff including two Clinical Nurse Specialists. Patients are referred to hospice from a number of sources including GPs, hospitals, the Cancer Society and palliative specialists. We also accept self-referrals. Franklin Hospice typically receives more than 250 referrals of new patients every year and we are actively working with more than 140 patients at any one time. This number will grow as the Franklin population increases and our population ages. While one of our nurses is available 24 hours, 7 days a week by phone, our normal home visit hours are Monday to Friday 8.00am to 4.30 pm. We also offer urgent home visits at the weekend and public holidays.

Franklin Hospice can sometimes provide drivers able to drive our patients to medical appointments at Middlemore or Auckland hospitals if there is no alternative transport available. Franklin Hospice provides transport to medical appointments for patients who are unable to gain transport from other means. This service is coordinated by Hospice staff and volunteers and the driving is undertaken solely by volunteers. Currently over 300 individual trips are undertaken annually and a total distance travelled by the service is over 30,000 km. This is equivalent to a trip from Pukekohe to Auckland Hospital and return every working day of the year. Franklin Hospice can sometimes provide drivers able to drive our patients to medical appointments at Middlemore or Auckland hospitals if there is no alternative transport available. Franklin Hospice provides transport to medical appointments for patients who are unable to gain transport from other means. This service is coordinated by Hospice staff and volunteers and the driving is undertaken solely by volunteers. Currently over 300 individual trips are undertaken annually and a total distance travelled by the service is over 30,000 km. This is equivalent to a trip from Pukekohe to Auckland Hospital and return every working day of the year.

Franklin Hospice owns and maintains over 250 individual items of equipment, all designed to make patients as comfortable as possible and assist their families while they remain at home. Special beds, special mattresses and wheelchairs are just some of the items in our collection. Our Equipment team maintain and deliver this equipment which is provided free of charge to our patients.

Reflections programme where our biographer can record a patient's life story - a legacy of memories that will last.

Franklin Hospice has relied on its volunteer base to directly provide service to patients in the form of transport to medical appointments the provision of equipment to patients, providing short term respite and a range of other services. Our volunteers are also key to helping raise the funds required to allow the hospice to provide its range of services.