An important update on our services

Our three hospices – Chestnut Tree House children’s hospice near Arundel, Martlets in Hove, and St Barnabas House in Worthing – have collectively provided over 100 years’ service to our local communities. That’s over 100,000 patients and their families supported with specialist end-of-life and palliative care, helping them to make memories and die with comfort, dignity and choice.

Our services are free to patients, children and young people and their families, and as a charity we only receive 14% of funding from our NHS grant. We are therefore dependent on the generosity of our communities to keep the hospices running.

Sadly, like nearly two thirds of hospices in the UK, we’re operating at a deficit (£3.7m), compounded by increased demand and rising costs such as inflation and National Insurance.

Since we merged to form Southern Hospice Group in 2024, we’ve done all we can to try to bridge this gap without affecting our clinical services, such as making significant savings in our non-clinical teams, combining systems to reduce duplication, and exploring new income streams. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been enough, so we’re having to make some difficult decisions today, to ensure that we can continue to be here for our communities long into the future.

We’ve completed a detailed review of our clinical offering, and we’ve today proposed some changes to our services which, if they go ahead, will come into effect from April. This review would always be necessary in the wake of a merger, but our financial position is shaping the decisions within it.

We’re consulting with our colleagues on these proposed changes, which will take around 30 days. At the end of this period, we’ll confirm the changes that are being made and write to any patients that are specifically affected by them. We’d like to reassure our community that in every decision we make, our patients remain our highest priority.

Please visit our dedicated hub on the Southern Hospice Group website for more information and the answers to some of the most common questions.

We’d like to thank all of our colleagues, volunteers, patients, children, young people, families and supporters alike for their patience and understanding at this difficult time.