Ensuring our Future: Hospice Isle of Man Addresses Financial Challenges and Service Changes

We want to be open with our community about the difficult decisions we are facing at Hospice Isle of Man.

For decades, Hospice Isle of Man has provided compassionate, specialist care to hundreds of patients and their families each year, often at the most difficult times in their lives. This care has been possible because of the extraordinary generosity of the Manx public. Through donations, fundraising, and community support, you have consistently provided most of the funding we rely on. We remain deeply grateful for your continued support, which is needed now more than ever.

Unfortunately, the financial reality we face is increasingly unsustainable. Despite our best efforts, the combination of increasing costs, our aging population and the reality of Government funding accounting for just 24% of our total income (compared to 44% in Jersey and an average of 36% in the UK), has led to Hospice operating at a deficit for the past six years. This is not a position we can maintain without risking the long-term future of the charity.

As a result, we have had to make the very difficult decision to reduce our cost base, refocus our services and stop filling gaps in the wider healthcare system. This means there will be changes to some of our services and redundancies for some of our employees. Throughout this process, we will prioritise protecting our core services, our in-patient unit, Hospice at Home and Rebecca House Children’s Hospice.

We fully recognise the impact this will have on our dedicated staff, volunteers, and the wider community we serve. These changes are being made to ensure we can continue to provide compassionate care, dignity, and clinical excellence for those in the final weeks of life, now and into the future.

Hospice will continue to collaborate closely with Government and Manx Care, however, in a bid to secure an equitable funding model for Hospice, we will be launching our #FairFundingHospiceIOM campaign in May of this year. We will be asking our wonderful Island community to help us by supporting our campaign when it launches. This is a sad moment for Hospice care on our island, but also a necessary step to protect Hospice care for future generations. We are committed to supporting our staff through this change, and our patients for years to come.