Long term volunteer retires from Hospice
When Matt Stoves retired from teaching in 1998 he was looking for something to help fill his time, so for the past 19 years he has generously volunteered his time between Hartlepool Carers and Alice House Hospice.
Matt joined Alice House when it was based in Hutton Avenue and for the past 2 decades has collected patients from their homes and brought them to the Day Care and Hospice Services.
Matt explains how it wasn’t always easy in Hutton Avenue;
“It wasn’t always easy for me, or the staff, to get patients in and out of the rooms, which were down corridors. It is lovely now that the services have moved to the Holistic Wellbeing Centre”
In 19 years Matt has helped 1,000’s of patients who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to attend, and make sure that they got back home safely. In the beginning Matt used his own car, an old red ford fiesta and has continued to help patients when services relocated to the current site on Wells Avenue, and again when the new Holistic Wellbeing Centre was built in 2014.
Jan Dunn, Healthcare Assistant said about Matt,
“He has become part of our fixtures and fittings; it is nice that he has memories of the old building and it shows how things have changed for the better over recent years. We will miss his jolly face and I am sure the patients will miss him too.”
Matt is retiring for the second time, aged 75, and this time he is hoping to spend more time enjoying gardening and the sunshine; to say farewell Matt came in one last time to Daycare where he was presented with an award and said goodbye to many patients and staff.