St Nic’s Without campaign advocates for fairer funding

This year we have used Hospice Care Week, a national awareness week for hospices such as ourselves to highlight the critical need for fairer statutory funding for hospices.

Our ‘Without’ campaign which lunched to coincide with the week (7-13 October) focuses on the national argument for better funding for and highlights our appeal to our local communities asking them to write to their local MPs to advocate for change.

Cuts and unstable statutory funding threatens the quality of end-of-life care that so many depend on, and while there is at this moment no direct threat to our services we cannot let this continue.

We’re speaking out about the issue and using the recent withdrawal of £80,000 worth of funding from the Norfolk and Waveney ICB that St Nic’s has endured to demonstrate the point. During Hospice Care Week, we were featured on ITV Anglia, which contrasted the way we are funded with the way a hospice in Norfolk is supported.

In that case, that hospice’s care is funded by an NHS trust and the hospice charity raises funds to provide additional services that further enhance the care.

We also received other news coverage:

• Suffolk hospice boss fears for service after funding cuts 
• St Nicholas Hospice Care in Bury St Edmunds campaigns for sustainable funding model after £80,000 grant cut for palliative care services in Thetford
• BBC Radio Suffolk – Wayne Bavin, 07/10/2024 – Linda McEnhill our CEO is interviewed by Wayne around an hour and 10 minutes into the show and Connie, who has been supported by us, chats to him an hour after her (two hours and 8 minutes into the programme).

Our campaign is not over, we are still using our voice to highlight the funding crisis hospices nationally are facing, and we still need your help.

Please support us by writing to your MP. You can find out how to do that, and a template you can use here.