Walking with Hope

West Highland Way – Walking With Hope for ACCORD Hospice

Jacki Smart (CEO) ACCORD and Joy Elliott (Patient and Family Support Team Lead) are walking the West Highland Way in aid of ACCORD. We are walking this alongside 4 others from the ACCORD Walking with Grief group.

This walk will be a walk of Remembrance and Hope.

Joy.
For me walking this walk will be physical challenge. I have both professional and personal reasons for doing the walk. I have been very privileged to meet so many patients and their families over the years. I have seen the despair of life and shared the hope of how life can be lived again, with grief. Like so many my life has been touched by ACCORD. I will be walking and remembering all those patients and their families who have made this part of my life journey.

I will also be remembering my Mum (Wee Mags), who was in ACCORD as she left this world. I know the care she and all my family were given at that time, was nothing but care and compassion. I have seen over the years the difference ACCORD can make to what will always be a difficult and challenging time. I always say “we can’t stop what is happening but with a whole team we can make it different” for the patient and their families.

Jacki
Since coming to work for ACCORD I have been blown away by the care and support my teams of staff and volunteers offer to those who need them every single day. They are flexible and committed and bring magic, strength, and comfort to families at their most vulnerable time. I am walking the West Highland Way to honour these staff who make ACCORD wonderful and to help raise vital funds to make sure they can continue to do that. I want them to feel valued, appreciated, and supported too. I have personal reasons though. A dear friend, Andy, was supported by ACCORD in the last months of his life and it made the vital difference needed to support him and reassure his gorgeous family. It helped life after Andy become bearable again for us all and I am eternally grateful for that. I will remember him, and others, in my walk. It will be a very special 6 days for us.

We are planning to stop at points in each day and we will read out the names of those we are walking to remember. If you would like us to read your special person’s name, please email joy.elliott@accord.org.uk and please put Walk of Hope and the name of the special person you would like us to remember.

Each day around 12.00 we will read the names out while we are walking this will be found on our Facebook page. We plan to do live streams of the walk, but this will be variable dependent on signal.

Raising funds for ACCORD is ongoing, allowing us as staff, to offer this support to more people in our community. If you can support us, you can find our story on Just giving page at www.justgiving.com/campaign/walking-with-hope