Forty years of St Luke's - the charity at the heart of Plymouth hospice care
In 1982, a charity which would spend the next 40 years revolutionising end of life care opened its doors in Plymouth.
St Luke's Hospice began in an old family home in Turnchapel.
The property's bedrooms and living rooms were made into makeshift wards, while the doctor's office doubled up as a bathroom.
The charity's aim? To provide dignity for the dying. Now St Luke's is celebrating 40 years of doing just that.
The way the charity cared for people at the end of their lives was innovative and the charity quickly outgrew its first home.
By 1988, Prince Charles was in Plymouth to officially open the charity's new purpose-built hospice - just around the corner from the charity's first home.
One of the charity's founders Dr Mary Nugent admitted it was hard going in the early days.
She was the charity's medical director, and said: "A huge amount of fundraising had to be done even before Syrena House was bought.
"Then we had to fundraise to keep it going, and gosh that was a narrow squeak sometimes, I think they were really down to the edges as to whether or not they were going to be able to pay the nurses."
St Luke's remains a vital charity in Plymouth, caring for around 300 patients on any given day - now, just five per cent of those are within its own building.
The charity provides all of the palliative care within Derriford Hospital - but more than half of the people it looks after are living in their own homes.
The coronavirus pandemic meant looking after those people became more challenging than ever before.
While the hospice's staff are now used to putting on their PPE outside of homes, many felt they weren't doing their jobs properly when they were not allowed to hug their patients.
The charity says delays in referrals also means patients are sicker than they once were, and have more complex needs. Tragically, many are also dying more quickly than they did before the pandemic.
Selina Rogers, St Luke's Hospice, Urgent Care Service: "I can come onto shift, go away for two days, and my patients have completely changed.
"The level of death that we're seeing is something that we're not used to - and that's something that we have really had to adapt to as a team and support each other.
"It's not a normal thing to see that amount of death in a week."
St Luke's staff speak to ITV News
Despite how difficult the job can be, Selina said ensuring people have a dignified death is something she is passionate about.
"To be able to bring that bit of joy into someone's life in their darkest time, is just a great feeling - and knowing you can give that person the most dignified death, which is so important.
"That memory of a person dying, for their loved-one, is so important because that's their last memory they have of their loved-one and we want to make it a good one."
Steve Statham is St Luke's CEO. He described the pandemic as "challenging" for the charity and its staff.
"It's not been natural for our nurses," he said. "They are very tactile, they want to hug people, they want to put their arms around them. They just couldn't do that.
"To some extent they feel like they weren't doing their job properly, and that's a big thing for them as nurses.
"We've had to reassure them that we're doing the best we can in the circumstances as well.
"But there's certainly been some of my nurses who felt really they were letting down the patients because they couldn't be there by their side, they couldn't hug them, they couldn't put an arm around them or their families as well.
"Sometimes you could see the tears in their eyes when they were there doing it, thinking I can't do this. So for us it's about giving that reassurance to our own team that you are doing an incredible job in very difficult circumstances as well."
At the very core of the hospice are its patients and their families, with staff offering them specialist care and support in their final days.
It supports patients like Chloe Hunn, who spent her last weeks at the hospice after being diagnosed with secondary cancer. She died at just 22 years old.
Chloe Hunn's mum speaks to ITV News about St Luke's hospice
St Luke's staff helped organise a New Year's Eve fireworks party for Chloe and her mum, Claire Behennah.
"It rocked her world," she said. "It was horrendous for her, but Chloe being Chloe was very stoic.
"She went through chemotherapy and radiotherapy, she lost her hair - and her attitude was when she was poorly she didn't work, but as soon as she was well enough to she was up working.
"The strength of a girl of that age going through what she went through, was just unbelievable."
Claire told ITV News West Country her daughter felt like she had come home when she arrived at St Luke's.
She said: "It meant everything to me, they are like family to me now.
"When we went there, we didn't have a clue what was going to happen in front of us.
"St Luke's were just unbelievable, I just can't speak highly enough of them."
By 2040, it is predicted the number of people needing palliative care will have increased by 42 per cent.
St Luke's services are free, but the charity depends on donations to keep going.