AS service director at Sue Ryder Manorlands hospice, Oxenhope, in the month we mark Hospice Care Week, I wanted to share our huge thanks with our charity shop teams and volunteers across West Yorkshire for all their hard work.

I also want to thank everyone who donates and shops in our stores.

By generously donating your pre-loved items, not only are you helping to reduce what goes into landfill and the need to manufacture that item again, but vitally you are helping to raise much-needed funds so hospices like ours can continue to be there when it matters.

This support is so vital as the Government currently only provides about one third of the funding that hospices like ours need.

How we die is important. I see first-hand just how much this matters, not just for the person dying, but the people around them.

End-of-life care isn’t a “luxury” or a “nice to have” extra. It is an essential part of healthcare and it's a shocking situation that it takes the sale of second-hand shoes and handbags to shore up hospice funding.

Put simply, without the vital support of our charity shops, we’d be forced to cut back some of our services, denying people dignity, comfort and care at the end of their life.

And it is a situation which is becoming more and more unsustainable and precarious as the cost of providing our care increases and more people are estimated to need this support in the future.

I hope by sharing my letter we will encourage our local community to continue shopping and donating at their local Sue Ryder store, while letting our retail colleagues and volunteers know just how vital their work is.

We can’t be there when it matters without you all.

Thank you.

Sarah Bottomley, service director, Sue Ryder Manorlands hospice