Rotherham Hospice in urgent plea for government help over £525,000 deficit
“We would like to see more of a commitment and more of a sustainable model for funding hospices”
Rotherham Hospice are facing a projected £525,000 deficit this year, as the CEO calls on John Healey to extend funding following last week's budget.
Mat Cottle-Shaw, CEO of Rotherham Hospice, has written to John Healey, MP for Rawmarsh and Conisborough, to ask the Government for more support providing hospice and palliative care.
In the letter, also published on Facebook, Mr Cottle-Shaw writes: “I am deeply disappointed that your Government’s budget has failed to provide the additional recurring funding hospices urgently need.
“Those constituents and their families deserve to know that compassionate, expert care will be there when they need it.”
He later adds: “If hospice and home-care capacity cannot keep pace, those people’s needs will still have to be met.
“You and the Government risk sending more people into acute hospital beds because you have failed to fund the support that could have kept them at home or enabled a timely discharge.
“Families will carry more of the burden, and hospital teams will face pressures that earlier, appropriate care could have prevented.”
In the letter, Mr Cottle-Shaw estimates that 6,000 people from Mr Healey’s own constituency could require Rotherham Hospice’s services during the next decade, as well as a further 19,000 in the greater Rotherham area.
The hospice estimates that funding just 570 home visits costs the charity around £100,000.
Mr Cottle-Shaw is calling on the government to back Hospice UK’s ‘Fair Funding for Hospices’ plan in order to increase support nationally.
The plan calls for an extra £112.5m to be given annually to hospices, with the charity estimating around £450m is needed to fully fund hospice care.
Hospice UK estimates that around 270,000 people receive hospice care a year, but 25 per cent of people who need care are currently not getting it.
A government spokesperson said: “Hospices provide vital care and support to patients and families at an incredibly difficult time, including in Rotherham, and the Chancellor recognises the pressures facing the sector.
“We have made the biggest investment in hospices in a generation and are committed to improving palliative and end-of-life care, with a new framework to modernise services and tackle variation across the country.
"The budget protects continued increases in public spending while taking responsible decisions on the public finances, and we will continue working to support sustainable hospice and community care as part of our wider plans for the NHS.”
Emily Dowd, marketing and communications manager at Rotherham Hospice, said: “We would like to see more of a commitment and more of a sustainable model for funding hospices.
“At the moment we’re not projecting any cuts to services but we don’t want to be turning people away from our services.”
“We always try to provide the best service we can for the people of Rotherham and we're very lucky that we’re not in that position.”
In September, Rotherham Hospice announced the closure of their Wath charity shop and Swinton cafe in the Chancellor’s own constituency, citing financial pressures for the “heartbreaking but necessary” as reason for the closure.
Ms Dowd explains fundraising is increasingly important to keep charities like Rotherham Hospice afloat.
She said: “It’s always a bonus, but our key principle is that services like this shouldn't rely on fundraising to be accessible.
“We are really appreciative of everybody in the community that donates, but it shouldn't be down to them to keep the service running.”