How Your Donation Helps The Lighthouse Centre

The Lighthouse Centre was set up by Gemma Dearsley as part of her own vision for a charity with kindness at the very centre, combined with a wish from a friend who benefitted so much from the holistic treatments she received at the end of her life. We aim to provide holistic treatments to patients with long-term medical conditions or cancers, to support their quality of life at a time of vulnerability. Holistic treatments include therapies such as Reiki, lymphatic drainage massage and Hopi ear candling. Hypnotherapy and counselling are also available to those in need. But all of this wonderful work cannot take place without donations from kind and amazing people – like you.

Where Does Your Donation Go?

Treatments such as Reiki and Hopi ear candling have well-documented benefits to those patients where a curative treatment is no longer an option. The sense of relaxation, a reduction in anxiety and decreased sensitivity to pain along with an enhanced sense of wellbeing have been shown to improve quality of life for those receiving treatments. These treatments come at a cost, however, with average prices of around £30 per hour for Reiki, approximately £35 per hour for counselling and around £50 per hour for hypnotherapy. The donations we receive go towards allowing these treatments to be provided free of charge to The Lighthouse Centre patients.

Patient Visits

Patient visits are at the very heart of what The Lighthouse Centre stands for. These visits are absolutely vital to the emotional and physical well-being of the patients that we visit. The average cost of travel to visit a patient is £7 per journey. A donation of £28 can allow us to carry out a weekly visit to a patient for a month. As an example of how vital our visits are, one of the patients that we visit every fortnight is blind with long-term conditions, she is currently receiving Reiki and hand massage which has made the world of difference to her overall wellbeing. Visiting patients also provides important social contact to help combat loneliness which often goes hand in hand with long term conditions.

We carry out around 600 patient visits each year at an annual cost of approximately £4200 and your donation will help so many people to receive treatments and care in their time of need and help us to continue to be there when we are needed.

Making a Real Difference

During the last year, we visited a patient to provide Reiki treatments as part of palliative care at the end of their life and after they sadly passed away, with your donations we were able to continue to visit the family to provide bereavement support and comfort in their time of need.

Your donations allow us to make a real difference. We visited a patient for around 3 months with post-operative phantom pain to provide hypnotherapy to help with this. The treatment was a great success and saw the patient being able to be discharged from our care.

We have been visiting a patient who has multiple sclerosis for the past 5 years, we administer deep tissue massage to help ease movement. These visits make a huge difference to our patients and the support that the wider family receives is in their words “amazing”. Your wonderful donations allow us to continue to support this wonderful family.

Funding Training

Your donations also help to fund training. Training volunteer staff members to carry out the range of holistic therapies provided to patients by The Lighthouse Centre costs around £1200 a year. So, if 12 people got together to do a sponsored event on behalf of the charity and raised £100 each, we could provide training for another year using these donations so that our vital work carrying out these holistic therapies can continue.

How Your Donation Helps The Lighthouse Centre

What Your Donation Gets

£5 – A donation of £5 allows us to buy the oils needed to carry out lymphatic drainage massage – a most wonderfully relaxing and beneficial treatment.

£10 – A donation of £10 will help to cover the cost of vital supplies for the Hopi Ear Candle treatments and maintaining the hot stone equipment

£25 – Providing the uniforms needed by our volunteer staff members to carry out our work costs around £250 per year – 10 donations of £25 can help us to provide these essential pieces of equipment for another year.

£30 – A donation of £30 will provide the fuel needed for us to visit one of our patients for a whole month!

£50 – A donation of £50 will help to make sure our phones and email systems are there so we can be contacted by our patients, their families and those wishing to refer people to our service.

£100 – Will help to cover the monthly costs we incur as a charity. Without an office, insurances etc we would not be able to operate The Lighthouse Centre charity.

How Can I Help?

There are endless possibilities to the ways in which you can fundraise for us – let your imagination go wild! You could take part in sponsored events, arrange Pamper Evenings, have a cake sale or consider making us your businesses’ Charity of The Year to fundraise for.

All of your donations help, no matter the size. If you don’t have time to spare to take part in fundraising events, you can help us by clicking on the ‘DONATE NOW’ button on the top right-hand side of our website or click here. This will take you to the links for our Virgin Money Giving page where in just a few clicks, you can support us with a donation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Here’s a link to our Virgin Money Giving page where you can make an instant donation.

You can start a fundraiser for us here.

And you can provide us with longer-term support by setting up a monthly donation via Direct Debit to us here.

However you choose to support us, please be assured that every single donation you give goes towards the wonderful work that we carry out here at The Lighthouse Centre. We cannot do it without you and are so grateful for every single penny that is raised on our behalf.