A message from our CEO, Dr Helen Glenister

Isabel Hospice has stood as a cornerstone of compassion in our community for over 40 years, offering expert, holistic palliative care that focuses not only on managing pain and symptoms, but on living well—right to the very end. We provide comfort, dignity, and relief to patients and their families during life’s most difficult chapter.

But today, our services are under threat.

In 2024 alone, the cost of running our hospice services rose by 8%—from £17,890 to £19,452 per day. This steep increase is due to a combination of factors, including rising energy bills, cost-of-living inflation, and essential pay adjustments to match NHS salaries for our staff.

Since this past April we now face further setbacks with the introduction of increases on National Insurance. The NHS and public services have received funds to cover these costs but hospices have not. This has added an additional £220,000 to our annual staffing costs

Meanwhile, our government funding — which covers just 30% of our total costs — has remained completely stagnant for the past two years.

The numbers simply do not add up, and as a result, Isabel Hospice is having to have difficult conversations about which of these services we can continue providing. This will have a significant impact on the lives of those in our community affected by life-limiting-illness who are in need of our care.

To put it plainly: we need your help, urgently.

While the government recently announced a welcome short-term cash injection for hospices, this money is restricted and can only be used for capital improvements—such as buildings and infrastructure—not the day-to-day running costs that allow us to pay nurses, power our facilities, and care for those in need out in our community.

And so, we are launching the Cost of Caring Urgent Appeal — to protect the services that make Isabel Hospice such a vital part of our community. We are appealing to kind people like you, who know the value of end-of-life care, and believe no one should die in pain, alone, or unsupported.

• A donation of £28 could help Isabel Hospice fund services like an hour of expert nursing care.

• A donation of £44 could help Isabel Hospice fund services like the cost of running our entire Hospice at Home service for one hour.

• A donation of £165 along with 5 others could help fund services like the cost of a patients stay at our inpatient unit for 24 hours.

Last year, in spite of these enormous funding challenges, Isabel Hospice provided more care than ever before—supporting over 2,300 people. However, we are currently unable to reach everyone that needs us. Our Inpatient Unit is operating with a waiting list and while we have 14 beds, we are currently only able to staff 8 due to these financial constraints.

The national picture is equally bleak: over 300 hospice beds are currently closed across the UK due to lack of funding, and one in five hospices have already made cuts to front-line services or laid off clinical staff. This crisis isn’t just coming—it’s already here.

No one should be unable to access the end-of-life care they need while beds are sitting empty. So at Isabel Hospice, we are taking every action possible to respond—by innovating our fundraising, improving efficiencies across our organisation, and lobbying MPs for long-term funding solutions. But those efforts won’t bridge the immediate and critical gap we face today.