Haven House Children’s Hospice has launched a campaign to recruit ‘Super Nurses’ in order to care for more children from the local area.

We want to support 500 children each year in North and North East London, West Essex and East Hertfordshire by the end of the decade, as part of our five-year strategy, Vision 2020, but to do so we need to expand our care team.

Situated in Woodford Green, we are now recruiting for ‘Super Nurses’, who are NHS band 5/6 and would like to join our clinical care team.

Eileen White, Director of Care at Haven House, said: “Parents tell us that our compassionate and enthusiastic nurses make the world of difference to their lives. They provide essential respite care to help them cope with the constant demands of looking after a seriously-ill child.

“Like many hospices in the country, we have seen greater demand on our services in recent years. We need more nurses and healthcare support workers to respond to families’ need for respite and also support children who have increasingly complex health needs."

Eileen joined the team at Haven House in 2012 leading on education, training and development. Since then, the hospice has delivered training in the field of paediatric palliative care for nurses, allied healthcare professionals and GPs.

However, Eileen feels that some clinicians still have a misinformed view about the realities of working in a children’s hospice. She said: “People told me I would be ‘de-skilling’ myself working in a hospice compared to a hospital; but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Our team has to be highly skilled to care for children with complex medical needs who are often completely dependent on others. We are certainly at the forefront of innovative paediatric palliative care.

“Working in a children’s hospice offers a rewarding career at any stage. In contrast to a hospital setting, we have the opportunity to provide a greater level of personalised one-to-one care over a longer period of time. Having the time to care for families when they need you most is definitely one of the most rewarding aspects of nursing at Haven House. The beautiful woodland of the hospice also makes it such a magical place to work.”

To find out more about our nursing vacancies, please click this link to visit our work for us page.