The patients of the Hospice of St Francis in Berkhamsted are amongst the first to benefit from this new service. Each library provides an excellent range of titles – both fiction and non-fiction on MP3 CD - including popular authors such as Catherine Cookson, Marian Keyes, Bill Bryson and John Grisham. Every hospice is also supplied with an attractive unit to house the CDs as well as a CD player for group listening and personal CD players for individual use where these are required.
We believe that for the many people in hospice care suffering from life-limiting illnesses, audiobooks provide welcome relief from pain, discomfort and loneliness. Through the generosity of a variety of funders, Listening Books has been able to expand and develop its service into this essential area.
We are delighted to be working with the Hospice of St Francis. We have long been aware that members under hospice care enjoy our audiobooks; they are a great source of solace and help to lift them out of their circumstances. We have now decided to structure and resource this initiative to provide our service direct to hospices in a way which reflects their needs and the needs of those in their care.
Listening Books/ Director, Bill Dee
He continued: “We envisage that the service will enrich and complement the wide range of services the hospice currently offers to support the wellbeing of its patients and help them to enjoy a better quality of life.”
Jenny Burell, Senior Sister Inpatient Unit at the Hospice of St Francis commented: “We are absolutely delighted with the Listening Books Library and are very pleased to be one of the first hospices to be included in this new scheme. The huge choice will appeal not only to patients staying in the Inpatient Unit but also those visiting our Day Hospice and visited by our Home Care team.”