Patients at Furness General Hospital in can take advantage of a new service to help them when they leave.

The Take Home and Settle service, provided by the British Red Cross, sees staff accompany patients home and ensure they are settled in.

To be able to use the service, patients must be over 18 and able to get in and out of into a car.

The service, which reaches as far as Grange-over-Sands, is helping to aid quicker discharges and improve the experience that patients have when leaving hospital

There is no charge to patients for the service which is currently set to run until the end of March.

Tracy Ashton, discharge matron at Furness General Hospital and discharge lead for University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, said: “This is an important service because in Barrow we do get a lot of elderly and frail patients coming through our doors who don’t necessarily need hospital care and who are able to go home.”