Palliative Care
For two decades, The Foundation has been a steadfast supporter of palliative care, enabling both adult and children's hospices to deliver dignified, compassionate care.
Over two decades, The Foundation has championed palliative care across the UK, supporting hospices and community services that enable people facing life-limiting illnesses to receive expert, compassionate care.
We have funded adult hospices delivering in-patient care, specialist nursing, and bereavement support for grieving families.
Our grants have enabled hospice at home services, allowing people to die peacefully in their own homes with seamless care. We have backed children's hospices providing respite, specialist paediatric care, and family support.
We have also invested in education and training programmes, ensuring that palliative care practitioners possess the skills and knowledge to deliver dignified, evidence-based care when it matters most.
SINCE 2005
2005-25
232
Grants awarded
£3.87m
Awarded to hospices
105
Organisations supported
Theme: Adult hospice care
The Foundation has supported adult hospice care across the UK, enabling hospices to deliver compassionate end-of-life care when it matters most.
Our grants have funded clinical staff costs for in-patient units, specialist nursing teams, and healthcare assistants providing essential bedside care. We have supported lymphoedema services, physiotherapy, breathing clinics, and triage services that ensure patients receive timely, appropriate support.
Our funding has enabled bereavement counselling for children, young people, and families, specialist services for motor neurone disease patients, and transitional care programmes for young adults. We have invested in specialist equipment, palliative care beds, and 24/7 advice lines, ensuring that people facing life-limiting illnesses receive dignified, expert care
Theme: Hospice at Home
The Foundation has championed hospice at home services, enabling people to receive palliative care in the comfort and familiarity of their own homes.
Our grants have funded community nursing teams, specialist nurses, and healthcare assistants providing hands-on care and support to patients and families during end-of-life stages. We have backed rapid response services, night sitting programmes for high-risk patients, and overnight care ensuring vulnerable people receive compassionate support when needed most.
Our funding has established new hospice at home services in underserved areas and expanded existing provision to meet rising demand. We have invested in nurse salaries, training, and equipment, ensuring that people can choose to die at home with seamless, dignified care.
Theme: Children's Hospices
The Foundation has supported children's hospices, providing specialist palliative care and family support to children with life-limiting conditions and their loved ones.
Our grants have funded paediatric nurses, specialist carers, and palliative care doctors delivering compassionate, expert care tailored to each child's needs. We have backed respite care services, enabling families to access vital breaks whilst their child receives quality support.
Our funding has supported bereavement services for families grieving the loss of a child, perinatal midwife services for families whose babies are unlikely to survive, and sibling support programmes.
We have invested in capital projects, equipment, and community support services, ensuring that children and families receive holistic care and practical help during profoundly difficult times.
Theme: Education & Training
The Foundation has invested in education and training programmes within hospices, recognising that skilled, knowledgeable staff deliver better outcomes for patients and families.
Our grants have funded palliative care training for nurses and social care workers, enabling frontline practitioners to develop expertise in end-of-life care. We have supported specialist courses on difficult conversations, helping staff communicate compassionately with patients and families facing life-limiting illness. Our funding has backed e-learning platforms, making training accessible to dispersed teams, and training programmes for care home staff extending palliative care knowledge beyond hospice settings.
We have invested in carers' training and education initiatives, ensuring that the entire workforce—from nurses to support staff—delivers evidence-based, compassionate, dignified care.
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What we have learnt and how this funding programme has evolved
Over the past two decades, the James Tudor Foundation’s hospice funding has evolved in response to both sector challenges and what we have learned about enabling high‑quality end‑of‑life care. Earlier support was largely delivered through restricted, single‑year grants, aligned with prevailing practice at the time. While valuable, this model offered limited flexibility for hospices operating amid rising costs, growing complexity of need and uncertain statutory funding.
Informed by ongoing dialogue with hospice leaders and wider sector evidence, we have progressively reshaped our approach. Our funding has moved towards unrestricted grants that recognise the full cost of delivering holistic hospice care – from clinical staffing and bereavement support to core operational and governance needs. Most recently, this has been strengthened through the introduction of multi‑year funding, offering greater certainty, reducing administrative burden and supporting longer‑term planning.
Crucially, the revised model allows for uplifts between instalments to reflect inflationary pressures, helping to ensure that grant value is not eroded over time. This shift marks a transition towards partnership funding rooted in trust, flexibility and realism, and reflects our commitment to supporting hospices not only to sustain their services, but to plan confidently and continue delivering compassionate, community‑based care.
See our Hospice Care funding page for further details.
