Jeremy Miles MS, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care
Hospices play a pivotal and deeply valued role in Wales, providing compassionate, person‑centred care to people with life‑limiting conditions and at the end of their lives.
We are committed to ensuring everyone who needs palliative and end‑of‑life care can access timely, high‑quality support, which meets their needs, preferences and circumstances, wherever they need it.
Over the course of this Senedd term, we have prioritised a significant programme of work to strengthen palliative and end-of-life care, in partnership with hospices, the NHS and the wider sector. This has included increased funding, strengthened leadership, workforce development and investment in bereavement services.
Today, I am launching an approach to the Commissioning of Hospice Care in Wales, which has been developed by the Joint Commissioning Committee and the Strategic Programme for Palliative and End‑of‑Life Care.
While hospices make a vital contribution to our health and care system, delivering specialist inpatient and community‑based services, the commissioning arrangements have developed consistently over time, resulting in variation in access, funding approaches and long‑term sustainability across Wales.
The new guidance is an important step forward, setting out shared commissioning principles, clarifying expectations of good practice, and providing practical direction for commissioners and providers over the short, medium and long term.
It also lays the foundations for further work, including a national needs assessment, the development of a core service specification, and a move towards a more sustainable national commissioning model from next year.
It will ensure all hospice services are:
- Based on assessed population need
- High quality and outcome-focused
- Commissioned equitably across health boards
- Transparent and proportionate in funding and reporting
- Financially sustainable over the long term.
I am also today providing additional in-year financial support for hospices to help them meet the challenges caused by rising energy costs, workforce shortages, and increasing demand and complexity of care.
I am providing an additional £4.3m to help stabilise children’s and adult hospice services across Wales. This will support providers to maintain essential services, protect staffing capacity, and ensure continuity of high‑quality care for patients and families at a critical time. This is on top of the £3m annual uplift to hospice funding in the 2025-26 Welsh Budget and means we have provided more than £25m in extra funding to support hospices over the course of this Senedd.
Taken together, the stabilisation funding and the commissioning approach is a package of support for the hospice sector – providing immediate financial relief while setting a clear, evidence‑based pathway towards longer‑term sustainability and equity.
Under the leadership of the national programme and working closely with health boards, hospices and people with lived experience, we will continue to tackle the challenges ahead of us, while focusing on delivering person‑centred, high‑quality palliative and end‑of‑life care for everyone who needs it in Wales.