We're here to help
There can be few things worse in life than being told that your child could die before you, but for an estimated 20,000 families in the UK this is a reality.
Children’s hospices provide an essential and free service for thousands of children, young people and their families. Like all specialist services, they need funding. Unfortunately, children’s hospices receive little funding from statutory sources, and the funding that is available is only short term. This prevents hospice services from planning effectively for the long term and offering existing and future families a guarantee of care and support. The £20 million funding plan recently announced by the Government, in Fair Play’s view, is nothing more than a ‘sticking plaster’ and will not provide long-term, consistent, guaranteed and increased government funding.
We at Fair Play for Children’s Hospices believe that children’s hospices should receive greater amounts of statutory funds, at least at parity with adult hospices, who receive a greater proportion of their funds from government sources.
Fair Play for Children’s Hospices was launched in 2006 by Neil Bruce Copp OBE, founder of the NBC Winner Foundation. The Foundation funds the Fair Play campaign. Mr Bruce Copp has a long history of involvement with children’s charities, including support for Shooting Star Children’s Hospice in Hampton. Click here to find out more about Neil.
Hospice Funding
Currently, children’s hospice services are mainly funded by donations from the public, which help each hospice to raise the £2.5 million it costs (on average) to run a hospice and its ancillary services. Statutory funding from the government is often unpredictable and at most, will cover 20% of a hospice’s running costs. Fair Play is hugely grateful for the Government’s recent £20 million cash injection but realistically, this money will run out soon and the new entitlement systems introduced are onerous, time consuming and with no guarantees, leaving many hospices to pick up the financial pieces.
Adult hospices currently receive approximately 38% of their running costs from the government. Whilst Fair Play believes that it is right that they should get this money, it is unhappy with the difference between funding for adult and children’s hospices. Fair Play believes that adult and children’s hospices should get the same proportion of their money from the government, otherwise known as parity of funding.
Your support
You can support the campaign by writing to your local MP ask him/her to support our call for greater parity of funding both within their political party and in Parliament.
