St Catherine’s Hospice, Princess Alice Hospice, Shooting Star Children’s Hospices, Phyllis Tuckwell and Woking & Sam Beare Hospice and Wellbeing Care have joined together to show their support to hospices across the country experiencing serious financial hardship. Hospice UK reports that 75% of hospices in England are already running a deficit this year, as costs continue to rise.
On Wednesday 15 April, a Day of Action event at Westminster called on the government to implement Hospice UK’s four-point plan for fair hospice funding, to safeguard against further service cuts, giving hospices the ability to plan ahead to meet the growing costs and need they continue to face.
Giles Tomsett, CEO of St Catherine’s Hospice, represented the Surrey hospices when he attended the Day of Action. Giles said: ‘Adults and children whose lives have been touched by hospice care know how vital it is. Hospices provide free, essential support to thousands of people every year, yet many are now facing impossible decisions about cutting services.
Hospices will always be charities rooted in their local communities, and we are incredibly grateful for the fundraising support that helps sustain our services. But communities cannot do this alone. We are asking the government to match that commitment with fair, sustainable funding, so fewer people miss out on the specialist end of life care they need.
On average, UK adult hospices receive 27% of their total expenditure in statutory funding, while children’s hospices only receive 18%. For the rest, they fundraise in different ways to deliver a wide range of clinical, holistic and wellbeing services to support people and their loved ones before, during and after death. Fundraising activity includes legacy giving, revenue raised from shops, and the generous ongoing contributions of supporters.
Nigel Seymour, CEO of Princess Alice Hospice, said: ‘We stand shoulder to shoulder with all hospices in England that are struggling, financially. For those forced to cut services, the impact on local people at the most vulnerable time of their lives is clearly devastating. We want the government to fund hospice care fairly and to fully recognise the part we can continue to play, in the complex end-of-life healthcare solution, by relieving the burden on the NHS.’
Across England, surging costs have led to many hospice services being cut, despite an increasing need as people continue to live longer and with more complex needs:
*Source: Hospice UK’s Financial Benchmarking Survey. **Source: Marie Curie.
All our services are free, but this is only possible due to the generosity of our amazing community. The Government/NHS only provide 25% of our costs, so we need to raise over £30,000 every day to provide our vital services.
Please donate what you can to help keep hospice care available to all those in our community who need us.
