In 2013, Maureen Newall made the decision to sign up to volunteer with St Luke’s. Now, 13 years on, she is still generously giving her time for free, three mornings a week – and the rest, she says is history.

Maureen currently volunteers in our main kitchen, making sandwiches for patients on our In Patient Centre as well as those accessing social prescribing services at our Ecclesall Road South site.

St Luke’s provides all the community palliative care nursing in Sheffield, so on Fridays, Maureen makes food parcels that go out to patients in the community. These food parcels are made up of frozen food, soups, smoothies, fruit, cake and bread - tailored for the individual person and their needs.

Maureen originally started volunteering when she retired: “I stayed not working for about 10 months and I was bored, bored, bored,” she explains. “So I said to my husband, ‘I need to do something.’”

Her friend had received end of life care and died at St Luke’s, so Maureen decided to look for volunteer opportunities with us. After a long career, she wanted to do something entirely different to what she had done at work so she signed up to volunteer with the St Luke’s Hospitality team.

Since then, Maureen has had many different volunteering roles. In her first role with Hospitality, she would make drinks and chat to patients in the hospice. She then started volunteering in the ward kitchen, where she helped patients who needed support at mealtimes.

When asked the best thing about volunteering with St Luke’s, Maureen simply says it’s the people. “I stay volunteering because of the people. They’re the most important thing. People here are friendly, nice and so kind.”

Asked what first inspired her to volunteer, Maureen’s answer comes with a smile. Pointing to her husband, she joked: “To get away from him!” Yet since Maureen began volunteering, her husband, Michael, has got involved too. Michael has now been supporting with PAT testing at the St Luke’s charity shops for the past 10 years.

Maureen said volunteering has allowed her and Michael to meet lots of different people, and have different experiences and stories to tell each other at the end of the day.

“Volunteering gives something to me too, as well as me giving something to St Luke’s,” explains Maureen. “It fills my time, I enjoy it, I’m socialising with different people and I’m doing something useful.”

In 2019, St Luke’s Hospice volunteers were honoured for service in the community by being awarded The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, the highest award given to volunteer groups across the UK. In recognition of their volunteering commitment, Maureen and Michael were chosen to represent St Luke’s at the Buckingham Palace Garden Party to celebrate the award.

Maureen’s message to others thinking of volunteering for St Luke’s is purely to “go for it”. “There’s lots of different roles available and you will enjoy it – there really is something for everyone.”

“People say to me ‘how do you keep going to the hospice?’ and I just say it’s not an awful place, it’s a happy place really. It’s a very happy place.”