When a Hospice Closes Its Doors:
The Richard House Story and Why It Matters
In December 2025, Richard House Children’s Hospice in East London closed its doors for the last time. After twenty-five years of caring for seriously ill children and their families, the hospice simply ran out of money.
For us at Hospice Aid UK, this news hit particularly hard.
We know Richard House. We’ve been there. We first supported Richard House back in 2003, and returned to help again and again over the years. On one occasion, we provided funding for a new bedroom — a room that gave a child comfort, privacy, and dignity during one of the most difficult periods of their family’s life. Our founder, Jo, visited the hospice and saw first-hand the extraordinary care that the team provided. It was one of those visits that reminds you exactly why this work matters.
"When we visited Richard House Children's Hospice it was such a warm and welcoming place. We were shocked and saddened to hear that they have closed their doors forever.
The beautiful playroom, where siblings of the young patients could play happily with their brother or sister - now stands silent and empty. How can that be replaced?
And the hundreds of memory pebbles, each one a small tribute to a precious life lost, seem to whisper tales of love and loss.
It must have been a heartbreaking decision for Richard House to ask the parents to collect them, causing fresh waves of heartache. These pebbles, once a symbol of remembrance and healing, now seem orphaned and displaced.
The closure of Richard House children's hospice weighs heavy on our hearts. It is not just the end of a place; it's the loss of a home - the shattering of countless memories and moments of solace for grieving families."
So, when we heard that Richard House was closing, we weren’t just reading a headline. We were thinking about the children we’d helped there. About their families. About all the families who’d walked through those doors and found something they desperately needed: support, kindness, and a place where their child was truly understood.
What happened at Richard House?
Richard House was London’s first children’s hospice, founded in 2000. It provided overnight stays, day visits, home care, counselling, and bereavement support for more than 300 children and young people with life-limiting conditions. It was, by every measure, a lifeline.
But like so many hospices across the UK, Richard House relied heavily on charitable donations to survive. Less than a third of its funding came from the NHS. When costs rose and income fell, the gap became impossible to close. The trustees explored every option – including a possible merger with another hospice – but in the end, the financial challenges were simply too great.
All services ceased on 17 December 2025. Administrators were appointed. Staff who had dedicated years to caring for some of the most vulnerable children in the country found themselves without jobs, just before Christmas.
The domino effect
When a hospice closes, the impact doesn’t stop at its own front door. It ripples outward through every family, every community, and every neighbouring service that has to pick up the pieces.
Haven House Children’s Hospice in Woodford Green, a six-bed hospice ten miles away, has been asked to absorb Richard House’s entire caseload. It’s now caring for 325 children and families across seven London boroughs, having previously covered four. The hospice is adding one additional bed, investing in new staff, and purchasing dedicated transport vehicles to help families who now face much longer journeys. The team there are doing extraordinary work under enormous pressure.
But think about what that means in practice. A small hospice, already stretched, has effectively been asked to double its reach overnight. The staff at Haven House deserve enormous credit for stepping up, but they shouldn’t have been put in this position. And what happens if Haven House itself comes under financial pressure in the future? Where do those 325 families go then?
The families affected are dealing with the reality of this every day. Parents who had built trusting relationships with Richard House staff over years have had to start again somewhere new. Children who took months, sometimes years, to feel safe in one hospice are now being asked to adjust to another. Some families who relied on local respite care and home visits now face long, expensive journeys that eat into the very time the hospice care was meant to give them back.
One parent, speaking to local media, described how the closure meant she couldn’t get the respite care she needed during a family bereavement. Another spoke of the anxiety his son feels meeting new people, and the two years it had taken to build the trust that made overnight stays possible. This is what happens when a hospice disappears from a community.
This isn’t just one hospice. It’s a pattern.
Richard House is not an isolated case. It’s a symptom of a much wider crisis in hospice funding across the UK.
The numbers are stark. Nearly two-thirds of independent hospices reported a financial deficit in 2023–24, according to the National Audit Office. For children’s hospices, the picture is even worse – 91% are forecasting a deficit for 2025–26. Across the sector, hospices are collectively spending around £78 million more than they bring in.
Hospices receive roughly a third of their income from government funding. The rest (over £1.1 billion every year) is raised through charitable donations, shop sales, legacies, and community fundraising. That model has always been fragile, but rising costs, increasing demand and an ageing population have pushed it to breaking point.
The government announced £100 million in capital funding for hospices in late 2024, and a further £80 million over three years for children’s hospices. That money is genuinely welcome and has already helped some hospices repair buildings and upgrade equipment. But capital funding doesn’t cover day-to-day running costs. It doesn’t pay nurses’ salaries. It doesn’t keep the lights on.
Across the sector, at least 16 hospices have already made significant service cuts, and sector-wide surveys suggest two in five are planning further reductions. Beds are closing. Staff are being made redundant. Essential services, like the kind of care that Richard House provided, are being withdrawn.
It’s an extraordinary story. But it shouldn’t have had to happen that way.
What gives us hope
Amidst all of this, there are stories that remind us what’s possible when people come together.
In October 2024, Zoe’s Place Baby Hospice in Liverpool announced it was facing closure. The community’s response was extraordinary. Within weeks, local people, businesses, musicians, and supporters from across the country rallied together and raised more than £7 million. A celebration concert at Liverpool’s M&S Arena, featuring local artists Rebecca Ferguson, The Zutons, The Real Thing, and Jamie Webster sold 9,000 tickets. A seven-year-old girl won a public competition to choose the new name and an entire city wrapped its arms around a hospice and refused to let it go.
The hospice was saved. It’s now being renamed Little Lights Liverpool Baby Hospice, and a brand-new purpose-built facility is under construction, due to open in 2026.
Why national charities like ours matter
One of the challenges facing local hospices is that they can only really fundraise within their own communities. A hospice in a deprived area of East London is competing for donations with every other local cause, in an area where people are already stretched thin. A hospice in an affluent market town has a very different fundraising landscape.
This is one of the reasons Hospice Aid UK exists. As a national charity, we can channel support from donors anywhere in the country to the hospices that need it most. When a hospice reaches out to us with an emergency, when they need funding for specialist equipment, or a new bed, or support to keep a vital service running, we respond as quickly as we possibly can.
We’ve been doing this for almost 25 years. We’ve supported hundreds of hospices across the UK. And right now, more hospices are reaching out to us than at any point in our history.
We can’t replace government funding. We can’t fix a broken system on our own. But we can make sure that when a hospice is struggling, there’s someone at the end of the phone who can help quickly, practically, and without red tape.
What needs to change
We believe that hospice care should be properly funded by the government, just as other essential NHS services are. Nobody would accept cuts to maternity care or cancer treatment because of a funding shortfall. Hospice care deserves the same protection.
Campaigners, parents, and hospice workers across the country are already calling for change. Some are asking for hospice care to become a statutory provision – a legal guarantee, not a service left to charity and chance. We believe that conversation is long overdue.
We’re calling for fair, long-term funding for hospices, not one-off emergency grants, however welcome. We’d like to see a sustainable model that means no hospice has to close its doors because the money ran out. Until that happens, we’ll continue doing what we’ve always done: raising funds, supporting hospices, and making sure that the people who need hospice care can get it.
Because no family should have to hear that the place caring for their child is closing. No community should lose the hospice that has been at the heart of its support network for a quarter of a century. And no hospice worker should have to worry about whether there’ll be enough funding to keep going next year.
How can you help UK hospices?
Donate. Every pound you give goes directly to supporting hospices that need it. Even a small, regular donation makes an enormous difference.
Share this blog. The more people who understand the hospice funding crisis, the harder it becomes for decision-makers to ignore it. Share this with your friends, your family, your colleagues.
Talk about it. Hospice care affects every family at some point. The more openly we discuss it, the more likely we are to see the change that’s so desperately needed.
Fundraise for us. Whether it’s a coffee morning, a sponsored walk, or a pub quiz, every fundraiser helps us help more hospices. Get in touch and we’ll support you every step of the way.
The future of hospice care in the UK
Richard House may have closed. But the children it cared for, the families it supported, and the work it did for 25 years – that legacy doesn’t disappear. It lives on in every hospice that’s still fighting to keep its doors open.
It’s our job to help them do that. And with your support, we will.
At Hospice Aid UK, we’ve spent over two decades making sure hospices can be there when families need them. With your fabulous help, we can keep going.
If you’d like to know more about our work, explore our website or get in touch at info@hospiceaid.org.uk.
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