Hospices: Finance

(asked on 4th September 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans he has to increase the parity of funding of children's hospices and adult hospices.


Answered by
Jackie Doyle-Price Portrait
Jackie Doyle-Price
This question was answered on 7th September 2017

The Government strongly values the crucial role of the children's hospice sector in providing excellent end-of-life care across the country. Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are responsible for determining the level of National Health Service-funded hospice care locally and they should ensure that the services they commission meet the needs of their local population.

In addition to NHS funding for locally commissioned services, children’s hospices received £11 million in 2017/18 through the Children’s Hospice grant, which is awarded annually and administered centrally by NHS England. NHS England engaged with children’s hospices through the children’s charity Together for Short Lives prior to a consultation on the allocation method for the 2017/18 grant.

In April 2017 NHS England made available a new children’s specialist palliative care currency for local areas. CCGs may choose to use this when working with providers, such as hospices, to establish a framework for understanding specialist palliative care service need locally, and providers may find the currency model useful as a tool for demonstrating the increasing complexity of care provision and to make the case for local investment.

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