Little boy in sensory room at Little Havens with a health care assistant

Why leave a gift in your will to Havens Hospices?

A life that touches others goes on forever

Everyone deserves the best possible care throughout their whole life’s journey. A gift in your will can make this possible.

There couldn’t be a more important time to include a gift to Havens Hospices in your will because the need for our care is steadily increasing. 

People are now living with incurable conditions for longer than ever before and needing more specialist support for longer. That’s a trend that is only set to continue, so we need to ensure we have the funds in the future to be there for everyone who needs us, for as long as they need us. 

Including a gift in your will to Havens Hospices can play a significant role in helping us do that. 

Fair Havens first opened it’s doors in 1983 and Little Havens, the only children’s hospice in Essex, open shortly after in 1998.  Since then we have cared for hundreds of thousands of local families, thanks to donations and fundraising from our local community.

Your Gift, Your Legacy

Every legacy we receive, no matter the size, helps us continue ‘Making every day count’

£500

This could provide 15 hydrotherapy pool sessions at Little Havens with two of our Care Team.

This means children can feel weightless and move around more freely. It’s also a perfect opportunity for a parent to hug their child properly whilst they’re out of their wheelchair.

£1,632

This could provide a year of physiotherapy sessions for someone.

Helping them to improve their mobility, which means they can live more independently with their illness or condition

£5,160

This could provide 172 hours of care at Fair Havens

Helping us to give care and support during a stay to control a person’s pain or medication, or support at the end of their life.

£10,000

This could pay for 300 counselling sessions

Helping children and adults find ways to cope with their grief following the death of a loved one.

You might support Havens Hospices already, because you, or someone important to you, has experienced our care. So you want to make sure we will be here in the future to continue providing that same high standard of care and support for the people you care about. 

Or you might have experienced the other side of the coin yourself. Maybe you know what it’s like to live with an incurable condition. Or have witnessed the end of life without hospice care and you don’t want others to go through that when there’s something you can do about it.

One wish we all share is for the people who matter to us to be able to access the best possible care and support when they need it. Including a gift in your will to Havens Hospices can play a significant role in helping us do that for more families like Kieran's.

Last year, legacies helped to pay for the care for one in ten patients at Havens Hospices. Adults and children like Kieran. 

Kieran lived with a brain tumour for eight years, and underwent multiple surgeries to save his life and treatment like chemotherapy and radiotherapy. But in 2019 his health began to decline following a bleed on his tumour, and he was referred to Little Havens by his Community Nurse. 

In March 2022, Kieran, age 13, was in Intensive Care at Great Ormond Street following a cardiac arrest, and the family made the difficult decision to remove his life support. After Kieran died, he spent a week at Little Havens before his funeral in the ‘Woodland Suite’. 

Mum, Emily, said “Little Havens helped us navigate what’s next because we’d never organised a funeral before, let alone for our child. The Care Team supported us through it all; they helped us navigate something nobody ever plans for.” 

“They held our hands, wiped our tears and guided us through what we needed to do, something we would have struggled to have done by ourselves.” 

“Little Havens’ motto is ‘Making every day count’, and that’s what they did for Kieran and our family. Even after he died, they made the days we stayed at Little Havens in the Woodland Suite count for us too.” 

We know a gift in your will is very personal and that not everybody wishes to tell us about their gift.  However, if you do choose to tell us, we would like to thank you during your lifetime.

Get in touch

See how your gift could make a difference

If you’d like to see the impact your gift could make, we would love to show you around Fair Havens or Little Havens.

This means you can see first-hand the compassionate care we provide thanks to supporters like you and meet some of our Care Team.

You’d be welcome for a tour, before or after you write your will to help you understand Havens Hospices and the care you will be supporting through your gift.