The purpose of Hospice at Home is to provide skilled care and support to enable patients to die at home if they so wish, to provide skilled care and support to those on the waiting list for a bed at the Hospice, and to provide respite for carers.
Our care is Patient Centred which means we aim to meet individuals care needs, ensuring dignity and privacy, and we will do all we can to relieve distressing symptoms, including easing pain. The Hospice at Home covers Brighton & Hove and surrounding areas, from 8am – 9pm, and all our services are provided free of charge.
The Hospice at Home service was conceived in response to a growing concern about the length of the waiting list for a bed at the Hospice. We were regularly encountering a scenario whereby patients were dying whilst waiting to be admitted to the Hospice, and we considered this to be an unacceptable situation.
Other hospices in the UK had successfully launched Hospice at Home services so we looked to these models to provide the answer. The culmination of a lot of planning and consultation with stakeholders was a bid to the Lottery (New Opportunities Fund). We were successful with this bid but did not receive all the money we had asked for (despite it being a very cost-effective model). Consequently, we turned to the PCT and to Macmillan to ‘top up’ the funding to the level required. Originally set up as pilot service, it ran for three years at which point the Lottery funding ceased. We lobbied the PCT very heavily and eventually at the eleventh hour they agreed to fund the service on an ongoing basis. Today the PCT contributes 85% of the required funding and the Hospice contributes the rest.