3 July 2025
Today the Government set out the detail of its ten-year plan for the NHS, a seminal moment for healthcare in England.
The plan focuses on three key shifts, including a movement from hospital-based care, to care provided within the community, through a new “Neighbourhood Health Service” that brings multi-disciplinary teams and services together with the aim of making healthcare more accessible to all. Our hospices have a long and respected history as providers of specialist palliative and end-of-life care community services, so we are pleased to hear community care being given such high priority in the plan, although we are very concerned that children’s palliative care is not mentioned.
Our adult Community Palliative Care and Hospice at Home teams play a pivotal role, alongside primary care and NHS community care colleagues, in supporting patients in the last weeks and months of their lives to be cared for where they want to be. Our Community Palliative Care Team supported almost 4,000 people last year alone with specialist advice and guidance. Our Hospice at Home teams, by providing short-term hands-on specialist care, have supported around 450 people to die at home in the last year. Our children’s community nurses and medical teams helped more than 200 children and young people with life-limiting conditions, and their families, in their homes last year. Without our services, the number of patients having unplanned A&E attendances in their last weeks and months of life and dying in hospitals would rise; this would not only have a huge impact on patient experience and care but would also further increase the strain on our local NHS services, many of which are already at breaking point.
The ten-year plan recognises the importance of partnerships between the NHS and the charity sector in order to meet its ambitions. We stand ready to play our part, but without a commitment to proper and sustainable hospice funding from the Government and in the context of continued financial challenges, our ability to support the NHS and our local communities will be significantly impacted.