Children’s hospice funding across the UK in 2025

Across the UK, children’s hospices are a lifeline for thousands of seriously ill children and their families, providing more care and support than ever before. Despite their importance, rising costs and an ongoing lack of sustainable funding has meant their future is becoming increasingly unsustainable.

Our new report, ‘Overstretched and underfunded: The state of children’s hospice funding in 2025‘ shines a light on the growing financial pressures that children’s hospices are under, and provides a series of targeted recommendations for governments across the UK.

Our research has found that:

• Since 2019/20, the number of children and young people receiving end of life care has more than doubled, rising by 98%, while caseloads for symptom management support have surged by 108%.
• At the same time, inflation and the cost of recruiting and retaining skilled and experienced staff has continued to soar, drastically increasing hospices’ charitable expenditure by 15% in the past year alone.
• Despite encouraging signs—including cash terms increases in statutory funding for children’s hospices—support from the state still falls significantly short of what is required.
• In England, despite charitable expenditure rising by 34% since 2021/22, local NHS funding from integrated care boards (ICBs) remains 18% lower and continues to vary significantly across the nation.
• As a result, children’s hospices are having to utilise their reserves and rely even more on their charitable income to maintain essential services. This has meant that in 2024/25, nearly two thirds (59%) of children’s hospices ended the year with a deficit. Unless urgent action is taken, 2025/26 will see this figure spiral further with 91% forecasting a net deficit.

The importance of NHS England funding

The funding that NHS England (NHSE) provides to children’s hospices, formerly known as the Children’s Hospice Grant, is a crucial and welcome contribution to the cost of providing care to children and their families.

While it is encouraging that this funding has increased in cash terms, the proportion of charitable expenditure that it accounts for is continuing to shrink.

In 2023/24, this funding accounted for around 16% of children’s hospices’ charitable expenditure, while in 2024/25, it covered only 15%. Nevertheless, this funding remains crucial to the sustainability of children’s hospices and the services they provide.

A similar picture across the devolved nations

Across the devolved nations, inflationary pressures are continuing to drive the increase in care costs while statutory funding has not kept the pace.

• In Northern Ireland, statutory funding is declining in both cash terms and as a proportion of costs—despite the hospice having already been forced to temporarily close its seventh bed.
• In Scotland, inflation, service expansion, and NHS pay awards have significantly increased CHAS’ expenditure. As a result, the £7 million of annual funding previously awarded by the Scottish Government now only amounts to 30% of CHAS’ total expenditure.
• In Wales, despite welcome steps in recent years, Tŷ Hafan and Tŷ Gobaith are currently guaranteed just 12% of their total care costs from statutory sources. While the 2025/26 Budget committed £3 million in recurring funding for hospices, it remains unclear how much of this will be allocated specifically for the children’s hospices.

Urgent action is needed

We call for the following action to make sure that children’s hospice care in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales is funded in a way that is equitable and sustainable for the long term:

England

1. We call on the UK Government to commit to protecting and maintaining ringfenced NHS funding for children’s hospices, formerly known as the Children’s Hospice Grant, beyond 2025/26.

i. Ministers should increase this funding annually to make sure it contributes at least the same proportion of children’s hospices’ expenditure as it did when NHS England increased the grant to £25 million in 2023/24.

ii. As a minimum, this would mean that the grant is increased to the following amounts in the years to come:

• 2026/27: £28 million
• 2027/28: £28.5 million
• 2028/29: £29 million
• 2029/30: £30 million.

iii. To make sure the funding is ringfenced for children’s hospices – and paid in full and on time – the government should also maintain the safeguards that NHS England (NHSE) has put in place as part of the 2025/26 payment process.

2. As part of the NHS 10-Year Plan, the UK Government should commit to reviewing the way in which children’s palliative care is planned and funded.

i. This should lead to multi-year long term NHS funding for the health elements of children’s palliative care in England that fills the £310 million gap that we have identified to sustain lifeline services, including children’s hospices.

ii. A review should also examine whether children’s palliative care would be more effectively commissioned at a national or regional level to create economies of scale.

3. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) should conduct its own modelling to determine how much the NHS should spend on the health elements children’s palliative care—and then hold local NHS bodies to account for the extent to which they spend money for this purpose.

Northern Ireland

1. The Northern Ireland Executive should commit to providing additional and sustainable statutory funding to Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice for the long term. This funding should be sufficient to cover 50% of the costs incurred in providing lifeline care and support to children and their families.

2. The Executive should ensure that any additional and recurrent statutory funding that is awarded is tied to and increases in line with the rising costs caused by inflationary pressures.

3. The Northern Ireland Executive should make sure sustainable funding is in place to implement ‘Providing High Quality Palliative Care for Our Children: A Strategy for Children’s Palliative and End-of-Life care 2016-26’ in full

Scotland

1. The Scottish Government should re-commit to providing additional and sustainable statutory funding to Children’s Hospices Across Scotland (CHAS) for the long term.

2. This funding should be sufficient to cover 50% of agreed costs in providing lifeline care to children and their families, alongside additional costs associated with rising employer National Insurance Contributions and achieving pay parity with the NHS.

3. The Scottish Government should ensure that any additional and recurrent statutory funding that is awarded is tied to and increases in line with the rising costs caused by inflationary pressures.

4. The Scottish Government should provide sustainable funding so that its new national strategy for palliative and end of life care can be implemented in full

Wales

1. We join Tŷ Hafan and Tŷ Gobaith in calling for all Welsh political parties to commit to sustainable, fair funding for both children’s hospices. That means committing to 25% of care costs in 2025, rising to 30% by 2030.

2. The Welsh Government should ensure that any additional and recurrent statutory funding that is awarded is tied to and increases in line with the rising costs caused by inflationary pressures.

If this action is not taken, seriously ill children and their families’ access to crucial services like end of life care and short breaks could be put at risk. Seriously ill children do not have time to wait for hospices to receive this reassurance.

Read the full report with all the data from our survey and freedom of information requests.

Previous reports can be found here:

Impact of increases to employer National Insurance Contributions (ENICs) on children’s hospices: Briefing
Short lives can’t wait: Children’s hospice funding in 2024
Children’s hospice funding in 2022/23
Local NHS funding of children’s hospices in England (2022/23)
Children’s hospice funding in 2021/22
Pushed to the limits: the impact of Covid-19 on children’s hospice funding 2019/20-2021/22
Statutory funding for children’s hospice and palliative care charities in England 2018/19
On the brink: a crisis in children’s palliative care funding in England