Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding was allocated from the public purse to (a) children's and (b) other hospices in each of the last five years for which figures are available.

Children’s hospices receive some statutory funding from clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and the Government for providing local services. The amount of funding is locally determined, and NHS England does not centrally collect data on this.

Children’s hospices receive around 15% from National Health Service sources. NHS England manages the Children’s Hospice Grant, which is awarded and administered annually. The grant is a contribution towards the operating costs of the hospices, not core funding for NHS services, for which the statutory responsibility resides with local commissioners.

The following table shows the amount awarded under the Children’s Hospice Grant in the past five years.

As set out in the NHS Long Term Plan, NHS England committed to increase its contribution to children’s palliative care over the next five years by match funding CCGs who commit to increase their investment in local children’s palliative and end of life care services; including children’s hospices. Subject to CCGs increasing investment, NHS England will match this by up to £7 million a year by 2023/24. This increase is in addition to the Children’s Hospice Grant, which provides an annual baseline contribution of £11 million. NHS England estimates that full match funding should more than double the additional NHS support from £11 million to a combined total of £25 million a year by 2023/24.

NHS England is currently establishing financial reporting systems to monitor the baseline investment of CCGs in children’s palliative and end of life care services. This will enable match funding payments to be made to CCGs where the investments are increased above the investment baseline in the previous year. As baselining will be ongoing through 2019/20, and therefore match funding will not be available in this year, NHS England will be increasing the children’s hospice grant to £12 million for this period.

Regarding adult hospices, these receive approximately 30% of their overall funding from NHS sources.