Hospice 'heartbroken' to make staff redundant

A West Sussex hospice has been forced to cut back on services and make 40 people redundant due to high costs.

St Catherine's Hospice, in Crawley, has 24 beds on site but it can only operate with 12 due to financial restraints.

Giles Tomsett, the chief executive of the hospice, said: "I'm heartbroken to have lost 40 excellent, wonderful professionals."

A Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) spokesperson said: "We are working to make sure everyone has access to high-quality end of life care."

Mr Tomsett added: "We're delivering some of the most specialist complex care that is needed by people and it's outside of the NHS system."

St Catherine's 'hospice at home' service has also stopped and a 24/7 helpline for patients has reduced its hours to 08:00 to 16:00 GMT, Monday to Friday.

The hospice has said it would have to ask relatives of those receiving care to make donations for their Christmas lunches, as they cannot afford to subsidise them any more.

The hospice said it had changed its referral criteria to focus on patients with more complex care needs.

Other patients will remain under the care of their GP and other healthcare services, with the hospice team providing expert advice to them when needed.

Dr Julia Fleming, a consultant in palliative medicine at the hospice, said: "What we are having to do is focus our efforts on looking after those people who really need us most.

"Community nursing teams and general practitioners will be doing more of the more generalist palliative and end of life care.

"We will become more involved with those people whose needs are potentially more complex."

The DHSC spokesperson added: "The choices the Chancellor made in the Budget allowed us to invest another £26 billion in health and social care.

"Hospice funding for next year will be set out in due course."

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