Will the Welsh Government commit to awarding further funding to children’s hospices as soon as possible, following the £880,000 award in 2022 that has since been depreciated through inflation?
We are committed to working with hospices and the national programme board for palliative and end-of-life care to find a sustainable financial funding settlement for Welsh hospices.
To aid our understanding, we have supported children’s hospices in Wales to commission a paediatric palliative care prevalence study to provide up to date information of paediatric palliative care needs in Wales.
As part of our Programme for Government commitment to review palliative and end-of-life care funding, we have provided an additional £2.2m for hospices on a recurrent basis from April 2022, including an additional £900,000 for children’s hospices.
In addition, earlier this year we provided an additional £4m one-off hospice cost-of-living grant to help ensure hospices can continue to provide their vital services and keep on providing high-quality care across Wales. This included £775,000 for children’s hospices.
Looking forward, we have agreed to the development of a hospice commissioning framework for Wales. This work is being taken forward by the national programme board for palliative and end-of-life care with support from new NHS Wales Joint Commissiong Committee (JCC). The framework is being developed in conjunction with Welsh hospices, and it is intended it will support adult and children’s hospices. A meeting with hospice care providers took place on 11 July to discuss the exploratory work and explore the next steps.