Welsh hospices 'struggling to meet demand' will receive £4 million from Welsh Government

  • Video report from ITV Wales journalist Marina Jenkins, who went to meet a family who know how vital hospice care can be

  • Article by Tom Taylor

Hospices in Wales will receive a share of £4 million from the Welsh Government, Health Secretary Eluned Morgan has announced.

It will be shared across 12 adult and children's hospices in Wales to help them maintain services, meet staffing costs and improve the quality of end-of-life care. The funding is part of a review into end-of-life care in Wales.

More than £770,000 will be given to children's hospices Tŷ Gobaith and Tŷ Hafan which support children and young people living with a life-limiting condition.

Jayde Adams and her daughter Savanah look forward to their visits to Tŷ Hafan. Savanah has leukodystrophy which is a life-limiting brain condition.

It costs £5.7 million per year for Tŷ Hafan to deliver their care service.

Ms Adams said: "Savanah coming here is the best thing - she absolutely loves it. It gives her that little bit of independence and it gives me time to catch-up on sleep and everything I need to do at home.

"It's somewhere to come and people understand us, they know what we're going through.

"Tŷ Hafan do a lot of fundraising to be able to support families like ours and I think they do need that little bit more support because they go out of their way to help families like ours and where would we be if they weren't around?"

Hospices traditionally rely on fundraising and charitable donations, but the cost-of-living crisis has made this more difficult.

Reduced funding streams have made it harder for hospices to retain and recruit staff and some have had to consider whether they can continue to maintain services.

Discussing the funding, Minister for Health and Social Services, Eluned Morgan said: "What this will do I hope is to allow them to pay their staff the kind of salaries that are being paid in the NHS.

"That is crucial for them to retain staff who have this real expertise and are absolutely compassionate in the way that they work.

"I'm sure that they would want more money coming to their hospices and I quite understand that. The fact that they are helping 20,000 people, very often within their homes, means that they're taking a lot of pressure off those NHS beds that are needed for the urgent cases."

Jayde says the staff at Tŷ Hafan are like family.

Jason Foster, Interim Chief Executive of Tŷ Hafan Children's Hospice said the money will go a long way in helping hospices provide care but it will not meet the immense demand they face.

He said: "These sums will enable both Tŷ Gobaith and Tŷ Hafan to almost record a balanced budget for the 2023-24 financial year.

"Without this funding, both children's hospices would have run at a deficit, drawing on limited funds held in reserve.

"However, this funding, while welcome, does not enable Tŷ Gobaith and Tŷ Hafan to meet anything like the demand for the care we provide.

“There are over 3,000 children in Wales who have a life-shortening condition yet between Tŷ Gobaith and Tŷ Hafan we are only currently able to support just over 400 of them."

It costs £5.7 million per year for Tŷ Hafan to deliver their care service in the hospice and in the community.

Palliative and end-of-life care supports people and their families with progressive, life-shortening conditions, particularly those who may be in the last year of their lives.

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