Birmingham Hospice announces redundancies amid ‘funding crisis’

A hospice is cutting staff and inpatient beds as rising costs contributed to an estimated £2.4m budget shortfall.

Birmingham Hospice said it is being forced to cut the equivalent of 45 full-time posts – around 14% of its total workforce.

Simon Fuller, CEO of Birmingham Hospice, said the cuts would affect patients, staff and the wider care system.

“The prospect of having to make highly skilled end-of-life specialist doctors and support staff redundant is totally unpleasant,” he said.

Birmingham Hospice operates 24 inpatient beds – 12 in Erdington and 12 in Selly Park.

The number of beds will now be reduced to 16 in total, with eight at each care centre.

All the services they offer are free for everyone who uses them.

A spokesman for the hospice said: “In common with hospices across the country, there have been large increases in its costs in recent years, including the price it pays for energy, food and medicine – and the funding it receives from the NHS it didn’t grow. at the same pace”.

Mr Fuller said there was a growing need for palliative and end-of-life care and the NHS was failing to meet the huge demands on its beds.

The hospice will need to raise £6.5m this year to cover the charity’s running costs, which amount to more than £55,000 a day.

Forty-two per cent of all costs must be met through fundraising activities, shop revenue and voluntary donations, according to the charity.

Lucy Watkins, director of income generation at Birmingham Hospice, said: “Our current situation does not reflect the generous support we receive and is entirely due to a lack of government funding for the hospice sector.

“While this shortfall cannot be met through fundraising alone, we are extremely grateful for everyone’s support.”

The Department of Health and Social Care previously said it had made more than £350m available for hospices from 2020.

A spokesman said the government had also provided £60m of extra funding, including to some hospices, to provide one-off payments to more than 27,000 eligible staff employed by non-NHS organisations.

Dawn Ward, chair of the hospice board, added: “If hospices are forced to reduce the number of people they can help, it will mean longer stays and delayed discharges from the acute sector (NHS), causing longer waiting times for treatment elsewhere. .”

She said the hospice remained “fully committed to providing outstanding end-of-life care” through its various services, but a reduction in capacity would mean waiting lists were “likely to grow”.

The hospice said it had opened talks with NHS commissioners to negotiate additional funding, but the Integrated Local Care Board (ICB) was also short of funding and making savings.

NHS England and Birmingham and Solihull ICB have been contacted for comment.