Hospice welcomes three-year state funding promise

Jo Cohen, a director at Shooting Star, said the charity needed to raise £12m per year

A charity has welcomed a government decision to continue funding children and young people's hospices for three years.

The government said on Thursday it would continue dispensing £26m annually, adjusted for inflation, to English hospices until the end of the current Parliament in 2029.

President of the Friends of Sussex Hospices, Kathy Sambrook, said all hospices in the county were "running a deficit budget", apart from one.

Jo Cohen, a director at Shooting Star, which runs a hospice in Guildford, Surrey, said she had been "hopeful" of a three-year funding arrangement.

Ms Cohen said in the previous two years, Shooting Star had found out "at the last minute" whether it would receive funding for the following year.

According to the charity, it relies on the government for about 15% of its funding and needs to raise about £12m per year.

Without those funds "some children at end of life would not have the choice of coming to a children's hospice", Ms Cohen said, adding: "That is something we just can't countenance."

Meanwhile, Southern Hospice Group said most of its funds came from donations and charity shop income, while government funding had "failed to keep pace with rising costs".

It previously warned that "many will be unable to access the care they need unless urgent changes are made".

Fleur Bryant said her family "needed the hospice so much" in the last weeks of her son Toby's life

Parent Fleur Bryant, whose son Toby died aged nine at the Guildford hospice after being diagnosed with rare inherited disorder adrenoleukodystrophy, said her family "needed the hospice so much" in the last weeks of Toby's life.

The child stayed at the hospice for five weeks and staff were "there for us every step of the way, explaining things, supporting us, supporting our other children as well," Ms Bryant said.

She told the BBC that her family "still come back" to the hospice because it "means so much" to her other children and was "the place that they feel connected to Toby".

"That support doesn't end when your child dies, they are still here," she added.

Minister for care Stephen Kinnock said the multi-year funding settlement was "providing certainty for children's hospices, but crucially for those they care for".

Mid Sussex MP Alison Bennett has tabled a debate in Parliament on Thursday over government support for children's hospices in south east England.