'Hospices in the West Midlands are facing financial crisis - we must act now to save them' - Impassioned plea in open letter by charity boss
Hospices must be better funded by the NHS if they are to survive, with guaranteed support to allow them to care for patients in their time of need.
That is the demand today from Toby Porter, a former boss of Acorns Hospice who is now in charge of Hospice UK.
Mr Porter today writes for the Star to raise his fears for hospices in our region as they are forced to deal with repeated financial pressures.
The organisations provide vital palliative care both at their centres and in the community, offering vital medical help and support to families.
But they are not given a sustained or regular income from central government, instead having to rely on short-term grants that do not allow them to plan for the future.
And there have been many cases of hospices running short, with recent redundancies at St Giles Hospice in Lichfield.
The Express & Star and Shropshire Star have both campaigned for a change with its Fair Deal for Hospices Campaign.
Mr Porter was in charge of Acorns Hospice in 2019 when it found a £2 million hole in its finances. It announced the closure of its Walsall hospice, but an appeal was successful in saving it and it continues to care for sick children with life limiting conditions.
Mr Porter's message comes as official figures show hospices have been forced to cut back services for people who are dying due to multimillion-pound funding deficits. The National Audit Office says nearly two thirds of independent hospices in England reported a deficit in 2023/24. At the end of 2024, around 300 inpatient beds were “deregistered or withdrawn from operation”, the report states, though some of these could have been due to a preference for being cared for at home.
Experts said the report highlights the “inconsistency and insufficiency” in how hospices are funded. In 2023/24 around 29 per cent of income for hospices was through Government funding. Most income for hospices is generated from charitable sources, such as charity shops and donations, according to the NAO report.
An open letter by Toby Porter, Chief Executive of Hospice UK:
I first had the privilege of speaking to the readers of the Star in 2019 when I was Chief Executive of the wonderful Acorns charity. It was their incredible generosity that helped save the Acorns Children’s Hospice in Walsall from closure in 2019, when the charity faced a funding crisis.
