‘We need more end of life care beds’

A HENLEY councillor wants to revive a campaign to increase NHS funded residential palliative care bed provision in South Oxfordshire.

Stefan Gawrysiak, who sits on the town and county councils, said that since the Sue Ryder hospice in Nettlebed closed in 2020, two beds at Wallingford Community Hospital now comprise the total in-house palliative care for the district.

Councillor Gawrysiak said he would like to see 10 to 12 NHS-funded palliative care beds provided to serve the 150,000 residents in South Oxfordshire. He said the beds are required for the estimated 20 per cent of the population that would favour hospice care for end-of-life treatment.

Cllr Gawrysiak said not much had moved since his previous campaigned in 2021 resulted in the NHS Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group agreeing to carry out a study of the palliative care bed need in the district.

He said that present debates surrounding the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which passed its second reading in the House of Lords last week had highlighted gaps in the country’s palliative care provision.

Opponents of the bill, including some palliative care doctors, are concerned the lack of quality palliative care available could push people towards an assisted death.

He said: “This has been raised, at a national level, that palliative care is not funded at all, or funded very poorly, so therefore the quality of end-of-life care is very poor across the whole of the UK.

“It’s all about quality of end-of-life issue, so that patients can be in a hospice that’s residential, being really superbly looked after.

“Then their relatives visit them a couple of hours a day or every other day, and the quality of their life for the relatives as well, is much better.

“I know that the Wallingford beds are being used wonderfully well because a few of my friends have been through them, but, with an aging and increasing population, we actually do need some residential palliative care beds.”

Cllr Gawrysiak said he hoped South Oxfordshire could get a similar facility that in Maidenhead, which has 28 beds.

However, the facility costs about £16m to operate each year and receives just 23 per cent of its funding from the NHS, with the remaining 74 per cent is fundraised from the community.

Cllr Gawrysiak said the NHS needed to provide more funding to the sector to reduce its reliance on charity. He said: “The NHS will say that we are prioritising end-of-life care at home, providing support in the home, but bear in mind that support is coming from charities. We need a searchlight put on this.

“How many people really would like to end their life in a residential palliative care unit where they’re looked after and cared for properly and their quality of life is better than staying at home?”