The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)
I am delighted to announce to the House today that the Government and NHS England can now confirm the continuation of the centrally administered children’s hospice funding, previously known as the children’s hospice grant, for the three years of the next spending review period, 2026-27 to 2028-29 inclusive.
This Government have already made it clear that we hugely value the important role that hospices play in supporting the palliative care and end of life care sector and the big role they will play in the shift of care from hospital to community settings, including via integrated neighbourhood health teams.
In December 2024, we announced the biggest investment in a generation for hospices, providing £100 million in capital funding to adult and children’s hospices across England over 2024-25 and 2025-26, and continued revenue funding for children’s hospices of £26 million in 2025-26.
We are now confirming that children’s hospices will receive further revenue funding for the next three years: 2026-27, 2027-28 and 2028-29. This funding will see circa £26 million (adjusted for inflation) allocated to children’s hospices in England each year, via their local integrated commissioning boards on behalf of NHS England, as happened in 2024-25 and 2025-26. This amounts to at least £78 million over the next three years.
This is in line with our 10-year health plan, promoting a more consistent national approach, while also supporting commissioners in prioritising the palliative care and end of life care needs of their local population. Further details on the process and delivery of this funding will follow in due course. The allocations to individual children’s hospices will be refreshed to reflect updated prevalence data.
This funding will be in addition to existing local arrangements for services commissioned from children’s hospices, and any locally agreed funding to hospices should continue at the discretion of the relevant ICBs, which are responsible for commissioning palliative care to meet the needs of their populations.
This Government’s commitment to provide this much-needed funding until the end of the spending review period recognises that children’s hospices need funding certainty in order to plan ahead, rather than relying on year-on-year funding decisions, and also acknowledges the invaluable support that children’s hospices provide to children with life-limiting or life-threatening conditions and their loved ones.
Meanwhile, ICBs will work to embed strategic commissioning approaches, with the support of the Department and NHS England, to ensure that population of children and young people with palliative care and end of life care needs, including those currently met through the centrally administered children’s hospice funding, are fully incorporated into their five-year organisational plans, as outlined in the planning framework.
We want a society where every person receives high-quality, compassionate care from diagnosis through to the end of life, and we recognise that access to high-quality, personalised palliative care can make all the difference for seriously ill children and their families. This funding will allow children’s hospices to continue to provide this all-important support to those who need it most, at some of the most difficult times of their lives.
More widely on palliative care and end of life care, the Government and the NHS will closely monitor the shift towards all-age strategic commissioning of palliative and end of life care services to ensure that the services reduce variation in access and quality.
Being able to plan for the long term is of vital importance to our children’s hospices, so I am proud that this Government have removed the “cliff edge” of annual funding cycles, so that our children’s hospices will now be able to operate on the basis of far greater certainty and stability.
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