Hospices care for 200,000 people a year, but they're powered by voluntary effort

Hospices care for 200,000 people a year, but they're powered by voluntary effort There’s a paradox inherent in the hospice movement: they’re integral, yet wouldn’t exist without volunteers and fundraisers

Hospices across the UK are this week supporting Hospice Care Week: seven days of events marking the extraordinary success of a movement that, in 50 years, has grown to become an essential arm of the nation’s health and care system – largely through voluntary effort.

But the week is at least as much a fundraiser as a celebration: although hospices have made themselves indispensable providers of free palliative and end-of-life care, they continue to rely on the goodwill of their local communities to keep going. On average, they receive only a third of their funding from the state; children’s hospices get even less. And for most, that contribution has been shrinking. The Guardian

Hospices would be in an even better position if their NHS funding support was both more substantial and more consistent