Richard Foord MP demands more support for struggling local hospices

Richard Foord was speaking in parliament yesterday evening (Monday) on behalf of three important local charities that provide palliative and end-of-life care across Mid and Eastern Devon.

With rising costs and a reduction in charitable donations due to increases in the cost-of-living, Sidmouth Hospice At Home, Seaton Hospice At Home and Hospiscare are struggling to make ends meet.

The forthcoming increase in National Insurance contributions will add further pressure to stretched services. Hospiscare, which receives some funding from NHS Devon, and provides some ‘at home’ services, was forced to slash its 12-bed unit in Exeter to eight last year, as well as make redundancies. Sidmouth Hospice At Home, which provides specialist palliative and end-of-life care in the Sid Valley, relies completely on local charitable donations, and offers 24/7 support, as well as daycare at its base in Sidford.

Seaton Hospice At Home, which commissions and funds a specialist palliative care nursing team to provide 24/7 care to patients in their own homes across Seaton, Beer and the Coly Valley, also relies entirely on charitable donations, channelled through Seaton Hospital’s League of Friends.

Richard said:
“We have heard that a third of funding for hospices tends to come from the state, through the NHS. However, in Devon, it is less than a fifth.

“For Hospiscare, a charity based in Exeter, the figure is 18 per cent, while for Seaton Hospice at Home and Sidmouth Hospice at Home, the figure is 0 per cent; they do not receive any funding at all from NHS Devon.

“Last year, I got together with Ben Bradshaw and Simon Jupp, the former MPs for Exeter and for East Devon. We put aside our political differences and wrote to the chair of NHS Devon, and secured an extra £500,000 for hospice care in Devon. None the less, the charity Hospiscare, still has a deficit of £2.5 million per year.”

The rise in National Insurance contributions will be crippling

“The forthcoming rise in National Insurance contributions are set to cripple these cherished organisations, at a time when they’re already under enormous pressure.

“Local hospices save the local NHS a significant sum of money and are experiencing rapidly rising costs at the same time as an increased need for their services.

“These charities step in where the NHS cannot, providing care central to the Government’s vision of shifting treatment from hospitals to communities.

“Yet the current trajectory forces patients back into overstretched hospitals.

“Hospices need tangible support, including full reimbursement for the rise in employer National Insurance contributions and funding for running costs.

“We must not abandon essential organisations like Hospiscare in Honiton, Seaton Hospital at Home or Sidmouth Hospice at Home. Their dedicated staff, selfless volunteers, and the families who rely on their care deserve our full support.

“Without urgent action, these vital services face severe cuts, leaving our most vulnerable without the care they desperately need.”