England’s first modern hospice, set up with the aim of improving the quality of life of terminally ill people, opened as a charity in south-east London in 1967. Its guiding philosophy was movingly summed up by Cicely Saunders, the nurse, social worker, and physician behind its foundation: “You matter because you are you, you matter to the last moment of your life.”
Since then, through a combination of donations, fundraising efforts and financial assistance from the NHS, the independent hospice movement has become a key element in the UK economy of care. Offering emotional as well as medical support to terminally ill people and those with life-limiting conditions, and delivering services to those who wish to stay in their own homes, hospices are an invaluable social asset. On both sides of the fraught parliamentary debate over the assisted dying bill, the need to ensure that good palliative care is an accessible option for all has been treated as a given.
