Children's hospice funding across the UK in 2026

Across the UK, children’s hospices are an essential source of support for thousands of children with serious illness and their families. Right now, they are providing more care and support than ever before, including increasing volumes of clinical care that would otherwise fall to the NHS. But despite their importance, rising costs and an ongoing lack of sustainable funding has meant their future is becoming increasingly unsustainable.

Our report, published in June, ‘Vital care, fragile funding: why children’s hospices can’t keep filling the gap‘ 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:

Across the UK, children’s hospices are providing more care and support than ever before, including increasing volumes of clinical care that would otherwise fall to the NHS. In 2025/26. their average active caseload rose by 11%, from 301 to 336 children.
Since 2019/20, the number of children’ receiving symptom management support has increased by 192%, end of life care by 106%, and step-down care by 43%.
At the same time, costs have risen sharply. Between 2024/25 and 2025/26, average charitable expenditure increased by 18%, from £5.3 million to £6.2 million, driven by higher demand, rising energy prices and the growing cost of recruiting and retaining skilled staff.
Statutory funding has failed to keep pace. In England, the share of children’s hospices’ expenditure covered by ICB funding has fallen to just 10%, while local authority funding has dropped by 53% in a single year.
As a result, for every £1 invested by the state, children’s hospices in England now provide nearly £4 in care and support, with the majority funded through charitable income.
This model is unsustainable. In 2025/26, three fifths (60%) of children’s hospices ended the year with an operating deficit, equating to an estimated total shortfall of £4.4 million. Without action, 84% are forecasting a deficit in 2026/27, with an estimated UK-wide shortfall of £34.3 million.
Some hospices are already cutting services: across the UK, one third (33%) have been forced to reduce the short breaks or respite care they provide.

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, remains a crucial contribution to the cost of providing care to children and their families.

In 2025/26, this funding increased to £26 million, with hospices receiving an average allocation of around £801,725. Despite this, it has not kept pace with rising costs with the proportion of charitable expenditure that it covers falling from 15% in 2024/25 to 14% in 2025/26.

2026/27 marks the first year of the government’s £80 million, three-year ringfenced commitment, announced in October 2025. Worth an estimated £27 million in its first year, this will lift average allocations to around £833,372. This multi-year settlement provides welcome clarity after several years in which funding was only ever confirmed annually. Even so, this funding is projected to fall further as a proportion of expenditure, to 13.6% in 2026/27.

Funding from integrated care boards

Children’s hospices in England also receive funding from integrated care boards (ICBs), which have a statutory duty to commission palliative care that meets the needs of their populations. In 2025/26, average ICB funding rose by 4% to around £586,588. But with costs rising at a faster rate, the share of charitable expenditure covered by this funding fell from 11.7% to 10.3%. Since 2021/22, average ICB funding has fallen by 15% in cash terms, and by around a third in real terms once inflation is accounted for.

This funding also varies dramatically by area. Our freedom of information requests have found spending ranged from £407.20 per child or young person in Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin to just £32.16 in Northamptonshire. Half of children’s hospices received less than 10% of their expenditure from ICBs, and no hospice received 30% or more.

These requests have also revealed a concerning lack of local data. Of the 32 ICBs that responded, only 28% could say how many children and young people had accessed hospice care in their area, and just 16% knew how many could benefit from it. Without this information, it is difficult to see how ICBs can plan and fund services strategically.

Funding from local authorities

Children’s hospices in England also receive funding from local authorities to help deliver respite care and other vital services. Yet, despite a statutory duty on local authorities to provide short breaks, the level of funding provided suggests this duty is not being consistently met.

In 2025/26, children’s hospices received an average of around £77,642 from local authorities, representing a decrease of 53% in a single year. The share of expenditure this covers has fallen from 3.4% to 1.4%, and more than half (58%) of hospices received nothing at all from their local authority.

At the same time, nearly two fifths (38%) of children’s hospices in England have had to cut their respite or short breaks offer, demonstrating a possible impact of declining local authority funding.

A similar picture across Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales

Across the rest of the UK, children’s hospices are facing similar pressures. While one-off funding uplifts have provided short-term relief, the rising cost of care is continuing to outstrip statutory income.

In Northern Ireland, statutory funding rose by 14% in 2025/26 to £2.19 million, but with costs rising faster, the share of the hospice’s expenditure it covers fell from 42% to 37%. While a one-off £500,000 payment announced in May 2026 will lift statutory funding to cover roughly 46% of expenditure in 2026/27, it does not provide a long-term solution.
In Scotland, CHAS received £9.6 million in core Scottish Government funding in 2025/26, which covers only around one third of its total expenditure. As a result, CHAS remains heavily reliant on fundraised income, which covered over 50% of its total costs.
In Wales, Tŷ Hafan and Tŷ Gobaith are currently guaranteed only around 12% of their total care costs from statutory sources for 2026/27. A one-off, in-year allocation of £4.3 million brought funding to around 25% of care costs in 2025/26, but repeated late, non-recurrent funding leaves both hospices unable to plan.

Urgent action is needed

With children’s hospices across the UK under increasing pressure, urgent action is needed from the UK’s governments to ensure they can continue to provide lifeline care to children with serious illness and their families.

England

We are calling for the UK Government to:

1. Implement Hospice UK’s four-point plan for fair hospice funding. Specifically, ensure that 100% of the costs incurred by children’s hospices in providing clinical care, that would otherwise fall to the NHS, is covered by the state.

2. Commit to multi-year, long-term NHS funding for the health elements of children’s hospice and palliative care in England that fills the £310 million gap we have identified to sustain essential services provided in hospitals, the community and in children’s hospices, by the end of 2027/28.

3. Scale this funding up alongside investment to increase the number of professionals with the skills and experience to meet the needs of children with serious illness.

4. Conduct its own modelling to determine how much local NHS bodies should spend on the health elements of children’s hospice and palliative care, and then hold them to account for the extent to which they spend money for this purpose.

5. Establish clear accountability mechanisms to underpin the Modern Service Framework and ensure its implementation, including actions that will be taken if ICBs do not meet the required expectations.

Northern Ireland

We are calling for the Northern Ireland Executive to:

1. 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 care and support to children and their families..

2. 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 for both salary and non-salary expenditure.

Scotland

We are calling for the Scottish Government to:

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

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

3. 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. Provide sustainable funding so that its new national strategy for palliative and end of life care can be implemented in full.

Wales

We are calling for the Welsh Government to:

1. Commit to sustainable, fair funding for both children’s hospices. That means providing statutory funding that covers 30% of the hospices’ care costs by 2030.

2. 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, children with serious illness and their families could lose access to the care they depend on, including end of life care and short breaks. They do not have time to wait.

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

Previous reports can be found here:

Policy and influencing