Published on: Tuesday 09 Jun 2026 at 00:00
St Clare Hospice was founded by members of this community who knew that local people deserve better care at the end of their life. This is still our core principle today.
Here at St Clare, we put patients and families at the heart of what we do – and we know this is a commitment shared by our colleagues across the NHS and beyond. As an independent charity, we rely on both our generous local community and the NHS to fund our essential care. However, over recent years our NHS funding has not kept up with the rising costs affecting us all, and so today we are announcing that we need to take action to secure the future of our hospice.
Before the end of 2026, over 60% of hospices will have been forced to cut services. This means that across the country people who are dying will not be able to access the highest quality of care that only hospices are equipped to provide, and at the same time skilled, compassionate hard-working staff are losing their jobs. This is a bitter pill for everyone to swallow.
I am heartbroken that St Clare Hospice is one of those hospices forced to make cuts because we don’t have enough money to fund the services local people so desperately need. For over a year we have been working behind the scenes to tackle the growing financial burdens that St Clare Hospice, like many hospices across the country, has taken on. Like everyone reading this, our bills have gone up, but in addition we have had to shoulder the increased cost of wages and National Insurance without any comparable increases as part of our NHS funding.
Last year we cut over £300,000 from our expenditure through making operational efficiencies, reviewing vacancies as they arose, and cutting back where we could. We did this whilst speaking with our commissioners at the NHS and other local partners, to try and secure additional funding for the essential, specialist care services that only we provide. Unfortunately, this just hasn’t been enough, and we are facing a projected £1.3m shortfall this year, so we need to take some very difficult steps so that St Clare Hospice will continue to be here for our communities long into the future.
Our community across West Essex has never been more firmly behind us. In the past year our fundraising, lottery and retail income have all grown, thanks to the support of local people and the hard work from our teams. I would like to thank every single one of you who have supported the hospice, and I am asking you to keep supporting us now and into the future – your donations and support are the reason we can be here for local people. However, looking to our local community to close a gap that is caused by our NHS funding not fairly and proportionally increasing in line with costs, is too much to ask.
Donate to support St Clare Hospice
St Clare Hospice fully supports the call from hospices across the country for fairer funding for all. Hospice UK are lobbying government – asking them to act now. You can read about the campaign on the Hospice UK website.
Because of the lack of increased funding from the NHS, and despite all our work on reducing our costs over the last year, this week we have launched a consultation with our staff. This may lead to a significant number of redundancies and a reduction in some of our services. We are devastated about having to take this course of action; however this process will enable the hospice to review every area of our care and ensure we use our resources to meet patients’ most important end‑of‑life care needs.
During the consultation, we are sharing our proposals with our staff on how we could reduce our expenditure whilst prioritising our specialist end of life care for local people. Our savings proposals stretch across the whole organisation and include stopping some activities that we know have brought huge benefit to patients and families.
We do not propose any changes to our Inpatient Unit so we will not be closing any beds.
We propose to maintain our clinical nurse specialist and medical provision, although at a slightly reduced capacity. Due to the level of savings required, we are proposing to stop our personal care provision delivered during the day as part of our Hospice at Home service. This service will be instead become a more specialist service for a smaller number of patients.
In addition, we are proposing to close our dementia support services and some of our community engagement work, as well as closing our GriefLine. We are also reducing our back-office functions and our management team to help reduce our costs.
Our priority always has and always will be providing outstanding care to people who need us. If you are currently receiving care from us, please do not worry – we will continue to be caring for you throughout this process. Please speak to your existing contact at the hospice or our First Contact Team on 01279 773774 if you have any questions.
These changes are a plan we never wanted to implement; however, we are making difficult decisions now that will enable us to retain our skills, knowledge and expertise, continue delivering outstanding care to people at the end of their lives, and operate within our financial means. It is our hope that in the future we will be able to grow once again and reach more people who need us.
We are committed to supporting patients, families, our staff and volunteers through this uncertain time, and I would like to thank you all for standing with us through this.
We have always held our core values at the heart of our work and so as we move forward now, we do so with compassion and integrity. You, our community, have remained beside us from the founding of the hospice over 35 years ago, and we are deeply grateful for your support now as we face our most difficult challenge.
Please support the hospice today if you can, to help protect our essential services for the future.
Supporters can:
- Donate to help fund our work
- Write to your local MP and decision makers to fight for fair hospice funding
Thank you,
Sarah Thompson
CEO St Clare Hospice
Press enquiries
For more information, please contact Rosie Knowles, Deputy CEO of St Clare Hospice, by calling 01279 773759 or emailing communications@stclarehospice.org.uk