Religion groups from the 9th grades visit the outpatient children's hospice serviceReligion groups from the 9th grades visit the outpatient children's hospice service

From the outside it is a small, friendly house in the middle of a residential area in Hessental. Even when you step inside, you cannot initially imagine what important and valuable work is done there, or what difficult circumstances are dealt with there:

The building of the outpatient children’s and youth hospice service in Schwäbisch Hall. In religious education, the pupils prepared for the visit as part of the topic unit “Suffering, Dying, Death and Resurrection” and learned from the leaflet:

(https://www.kinderhospiz-sha.de/startseite)

In Germany, around 50,000 children, young people and young adults live with a life-shortening, incurable illness, and 5,000 of them die from it every year. A diagnosis of a life-shortening illness presents families with an enormous challenge and a complete change in their lives.

To support families across the whole district of Schwäbisch Hall in difficult times of illness, dying and grieving, our association was founded in autumn 2006. Since then, many volunteers have been involved in family support, and our AKI receives ideal and financial support. Built with donations alone, we were able to open our house at Mittelhöhe 3 in Schwäbisch Hall-Hessental in 2018.

In her welcome, Ms Winter, the coordinator of the service, explained what help and support for the families looks like in practice: in Hessental, families have the opportunity to meet and exchange experiences, receive support with practical questions of life, or get relief in everyday life. For example, the volunteers sometimes go shopping or to the cinema with the siblings of seriously ill children, because otherwise the family’s everyday life revolves only around the critically ill child and the siblings get too little attention. Or a sick child’s heart’s desire is fulfilled and a trip to the zoo is organised. “Here in the house, laughter is welcome, but so are tears. Ultimately, we care about life rather than death, even though death is always present,” said Ms Winter.

After a talk by Ms Winter and a question-and-answer session, there was a tour of the house. Особенно impressive was the “Snoozle room”, which contains a water bed and light columns that create a very cosy and relaxing atmosphere, so that children or relatives can stretch out and simply enjoy the moment.

“That was very interesting,” the pupils agreed. “And a really important service.” Some pupils were keen to volunteer there, while others realised that this work would be too much for them emotionally.