Championing hospice care in Cornwall

How is Cornwall Hospice Care navigating a rapidly changing healthcare landscape?

These are challenging times for charity and for healthcare charities in particular. Cornwall’s hospices face the mounting costs of regulatory compliance against an ongoing backdrop of poor government funding. It’s issues such as these that led to Paul Brinsley, Chief Executive of Cornwall Hospice Care, meeting with Caroline Deneage, Minister of State for Care. “This was an important step for our charity as we work to highlight the hidden issues that we struggle with on a daily basis,” explains Paul. “It’s important we are heard locally and nationally and the meeting with the Minister, organised by local MP Derek Thomas, gave us an opportunity to highlight the burden of regulation for a small care provider that simply doesn’t have access to the resources of an acute NHS trust.”

“bringing the hospices closer to people in Cornwall”

A rapidly changing healthcare landscape is also bringing its challenges to Cornwall Hospice Care, but as David Renwick, volunteer Chair of Trustees explains, future proofing is about meeting the needs of the patients. “It’s our privilege to run both Mount Edgcumbe and St Julia’s Hospices, delivering not only our familiar in-patient services, but also expanding our important work into the community, effectively bringing the hospices closer to people in Cornwall. We recognise that patients’ needs are evolving and so must we. Our commitment is to ensuring that people can access the care that is appropriate to them in their place of choice and this we aim to do in collaboration with NHS colleagues and other healthcare providers.”

For Paul Brinsley, it’s also about wise investment of money that, in the main, is donated to the charity by its much appreciated supporters. He explains: “Specialist and intensive healthcare doesn’t come cheap, but we offer our patients, their families and carers the best and we provide it free of charge. Recruitment of staff has been a challenge right across the healthcare sector, but here at Cornwall Hospice Care we are proud to be ‘one team’, delivering our vision of high-quality care for all people living with terminal illness in Cornwall. Over the past 12 months we have invested in our existing staff and recruited more, equally outstanding people to help us develop.”

Cornwall Hospice Care

01726 839156

www.cornwallhospicecare.co.uk