Campaign for change and a bedded unit

Every day an average of 10 people will die in Gloucestershire as a result of cancer or a circulatory disease. Of those five will die in hospital. Two will die at home. Only one will die in a hospice.

Campaign for Change

Gloucestershire has only 17 hospice beds - for a population of 564,559 (2001 Census). The hospice movement is grounded in the ethos that everyone deserves to die with dignity and to have legal choices.

The Government's End of Life strategy states we all have a choice of where we spend our final days, whether it is at home, in a hospital ward or at a hospice.

That choice is limited in Gloucestershire because of limited Government spending.

Cotswold Care Hospice is campaigning to raise awareness of the need for improved palliative care in Gloucestershire.

It is lobbying government representatives to ensure that end of life care has its rightful place in the spending agenda. The hospice works with the Dying Matters Coalition, Help the Hospices and the National Council for Palliative Care.

During 2009 Cotswold Care has worked with media partners to raise awareness of the issue and to encourage public debate.

A bedded unit

Cotswold Care Hospice commissioned an independent feasibility study in 2009 to assess the need in Gloucestershire for additional hospice beds.

Building a bedded unit would be a huge undertaking, especially in the current financial climate.

The study established that there is a clear clinical need in Gloucestershire for more palliative care beds. The unit, which would turn the hospice into a 24-hour on-site care centre, is the best way to develop the charity's expertise.

Most importantly, it would increase patients' and carers' choice when, at the moment, that choice is severely limited.

But, at present, there is no funding available for such a unit. That means the charity would have to pay 100 per cent running costs.

The key recommendation of the report is that the charity focuses on developing and expanding its existing services - with the intention of working towards a bedded unit.

With this in mind, senior managers and the board of trustees are developing a five-year organisational strategy to work towards fulfilling the vision set out by our founders to develop a bedded unit.

Click on our clinical strategy to read about Cotswold Care Hospice's five-year care proposals.