In her latest blog, our CEO shares how we put your money to good use to run a safe and effective children's hospice.
As the NHS celebrates its 75th anniversary, we are proud to play our part in the wider health and care system.
Disappointingly there was no mention of hospices or the wider voluntary sector within the recently published NHS workforce plan. This is despite the fact that it is widely known that the NHS alone cannot support the nation’s health needs. The NHS needs to work in partnership - the underlying premise of the formation of local integrated care boards, including our own in West Yorkshire.
We are one of 10 hospices and nearly 14,000 charitable organisations operating in West Yorkshire, organisations who work on the frontline, trusted by many communities who find it hard to access core services including those delivered by the NHS without additional support. This means we have to spend some of our resource connecting things together, so that the families who need us get a seamless service from the system no matter who the provider is.
We don’t operate in the same way as the NHS and of course are funded very differently, but we do find ourselves subject to the same level of scrutiny by our regulator, The Care Quality Commission.
This year, 90% of the money we need to raise to support local children and their families will come from fundraising and our shops. Donors and funders want their hard-earned money to go directly into services, but here’s the dilemma:
Running a safe, effective and sustainable children’s hospice costs money. It also costs money to keep generating the income we need to provide our services. So some of the income we raise has to pay for things outside service delivery. It’s important to be transparent about this so our supporters can trust us to spend their money wisely and in a way that brings the most benefit to the children and families we exist to support.
This infographic explains this a little further. It includes many but not all of the things we need to spend money on in order to deliver safe and effective services that make a difference.
This year, around 78p in every pound donated to the charity will be spent delivering services. The other 22p is spent making sure that our charity is well run, solvent and a safe place for the families who need us.