Other Services

Highland Hospice is one of many voluntary and public sector organisations providing advice, support and hands-on care for people and families living with advancing, life shortening illness. We hope the links below will help you navigate your way through these organisations and find the help you need. If you cannot find what you are looking for, please contact the Patient, Family and Carer Support Service on 01463 243132.

Local Social Work Services

NHS Highland has been the Lead Agency in the delivery of adult social care in Highland since 2012. Highland Health and Social Care Services brings together community, primary, social care and acute hospital social work services. Contact details are on the website and vary, depending on where in the Highlands you live.

Living with Illness

Age Scotland - Age Scotland works towards a Scotland where everyone can love later life, inspiring and enabling people as they live longer to achieve better, happier, healthier lives.

Alzheimer Scotland - Action on Dementia - Alzheimer Scotland provides a wide range of specialist services for people with dementia and their carers. They offer personalised support services, community activities, information and advice, at every stage of the dementia journey.

British Heart Foundation - information and advice about issues relating to various heart conditions

British Lung Foundation - information and advice about issues relating to various lung conditions.

The Friendship Services in the Highlands website offers links to a range of social and caring resources for older people in the Inverness area

Macmillan Cancer Support - Macmillan in Scotland offers practical, emotional and financial help to people affected by cancer, including through their Online Community. They provide trained medical professionals to the NHS and have cancer centres throughout the country.

Motor Neurone Disease Association - MND Scotland provide information and support for people living with MND and for those close to them.

Children and Young People

Parentline Scotland - Part of Chidren 1st, Parentline Scotland is the national helpline service offering free support by telephone (08000 28 22 33), email and webchat. It is for anyone caring for or concerned about a child and is available from 9.00am - 9.00pm, Monday to Friday.

Crocus Group- With close links to Highland Hospice, Crocus is an Inverness-based highland-wide organisation offering information and support to children and young people who have been bereaved. They organize a number of activities and their website has links to other information on child bereavement.

Winston's Wish - Winston’s Wish is a national organisation for bereaved children and teenagers. Their website is a rich source of information and they also operate a helpline and on-line support.

Hope Again - Hope Again is the youth website of Cruse Bereavement Care, designed for and by young people. It is a safe place, where young people who are facing grief can share their stories with others. The website offers information about their services, a listening ear from other young people, and advice for any young person dealing with the loss of a loved one.

Child Bereavement UK - Child Bereavement UK supports families and educates professionals when a baby or child of any age dies or is dying, or when a child is facing bereavement.

People with learning disabilities

Palliative Care for People with Learning Disabilities (PCPLD) is a charity. In 1998, a small group of learning disability and palliative care professionals came together, concerned by their experience that people with learning disabilities who were facing a life-limiting illness did not seem to access the same services or receive the same quality of service as the rest of the population. Together, they established the National Network for Palliative Care of People with Learning Disabilities (NNPCPLD), which later changed its name to the PCPLD Network.

PCPLD aims to raise awareness of the palliative care needs of people with learning disabilities, to share and promote ‘best practice’ and to enhance collaboration between all services providers, carers and people with a learning disability.

Support for Carers

Connecting Carers - Connecting Carers is based in Dingwall and covers the whole of the Highlands, and works to ensure that unpaid carers in Highland are not caring alone, that they are acknowledged and supported and that they have access to the information they need to enable them to carry out their caring role. Connecting Carers offer a drop in service in Dingwall and also resources and information available online and by phone.

Financial Issues

HM Revenue and Customs - The HMRC website provides advice and guidance on any tax issues and claiming credits.

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) - the DWP website gives information about all matters relating to all benefits including funeral and social fund payments.

Citizen's Advice Scotland (known as CAB) - Citizens Advice Scotland, its sixty-one member bureau, and its telephone and online services together form Scotland’s largest independent advice network, helping people solve their problems each year in across Scotland. CAB provides information and advice on a wide range of issues including work and benefits, debt and consumer issues, housing issues, legal questions.

Macmillan CAB - this is an advice service based at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness (01463 706178) which offers CAB services alongside other Macmillan Cancer Support services.

Bereavement

Highland Hospice Bereavement Support Service - The Bereavement Support Service at the Hospice service is available to anyone who has been bereaved by the loss of someone in whose care Highland Hospice has been privileged to have been involved, or who’s end of life care has been supported by a Nurse Specialist such as a Macmillan nurse. Please look at the service’s web pages to find out more about what we offer.

Other organisations offering support include:

At a Loss - The UK's signposting website for the bereaved, directing the bereaved and those supporting them to information and services appropriate to their loss.

Cruse Bereavement Care Scotland - Cruse Scotland is the national bereavement charity, with close links to its sister Cruse organisation in England and Wales. Cruse Scotland operates a national helpline and can arrange face to face support locally.

Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief - Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief is, supported by NHS Scotland and aims to make Scotland a place where there is more openness about death, dying and bereavement so that people may be more aware of ways to live with death, dying and bereavement and feel better equipped to support each other through the difficult times.

The Compassionate Friends (TCF) is a charitable organisation of bereaved parents, siblings and grandparents dedicated to the support and care of other similarly bereaved family members who have suffered the death of a child or children of any age and from any cause. 'Family' covers a variety of relationships: TCF aim to help any individual or family affected by the death of a child; including unmarried partners, adoptive parents, step families, same sex couples and single parent families. TCF has no religious affiliation and offers support to bereaved families irrespective of the age of the child, cause of death, ethnic, social or political background.

WAY (Widowed and Young) is the UK-wide charity for women and men aged 50 or under when their partner died. It’s a peer-to-peer support group run by a nationwide network of volunteers who have been bereaved at a young age themselves, so they are well-placed to understand what other members may be experiencing.

Supporting psychological wellbeing

NHS Inform Self-Help Guides is a resource which offers a range of self-help guides to enable people to better manage and look after their own health conditions and psychological wellbeing; to recognise when help is needed and know where to access this. The guides can be used interactively online or in a downloadable booklet.

Highland Mental Wellbeing is an evolving resource which aims to bring together a collection of useful and valid resources to help people of all ages and stages to look after their own psychological wellbeing; to recognise when help is needed and see some of the help that’s available.

Facing death - whether your own or that of someone you are close to - can stir up significant anxiety. NHS Inform Anxiety Self-Help Guide provides information, as well as tools and resources to help you manage your anxieties.

Rehab 4 Addiction was founded to assist those affected by substance misuse and their loved ones. They offer a range of services, and help signpost you to the most effective treatments. This includes alcohol rehab, drug rehab, detox services, intervention, aftercare and outpatient counselling. Their helpline advisors are committed to helping you in your quest to locate effective treatments for addiction.