After thirty years, Rennie Grove Peace Hospice Care is closing its service for children with life-limiting conditions.
We are happy to announce that The Pepper Foundation will continue funding children’s hospice at home care through our partnerships with Helen & Douglas House and Keech Hospice.
Headlines:
- Rennie Grove Peace are closing their services for children with life-limiting or life-threatening conditions on 31st March 2025 after 30 years
- Pepper started funding children’s hospice at home services through new, established partnerships with Helen & Douglas House and Keech Hospice since March 2024; this will continue through a 3-year Pepper grant-funding programme.
- Pepper plans to fund more care and deliver more services in the years to come
- Fundraising at Pepper must continue to grow; we need our donors, supporters and volunteers more than ever.
It’s been a busy few weeks at Pepper and I have important (good!) news for all our friends and supporters and everyone in our local communities.
Children with life-limiting or life-threatening conditions and their families are continuing to receive the vital care and support they need from the teams at Helen & Douglas House for Buckinghamshire and Keech Hospice for Hertfordshire supported by substantial funding from The Pepper Foundation which has already made grants totalling £250,000 towards this.
We are very disappointed that Rennie Grove Peace Hospice Care, who ran the Pepper Nursing Service with funding from The Pepper Foundation for over 30 years, has now announced that it is discontinuing all their services for children and young people at the end of March 2025. This will mark the end of a partnership that has worked incredibly well for over three decades.
In anticipation of this outcome, we began partnering with Helen & Douglas House and Keech Hospice back in March 2024; both hospices are experienced experts in children’s hospice at home care. They have been brilliant at supporting the children and families who were previously on the Rennie Grove Peace caseload. They have also supported Sarah Mobsby, the one remaining nurse funded by Pepper.
The two new partnerships mean that Pepper is already helping to fund support for many more children with life-limiting or life-threatening conditions.
Pepper pioneered the concept of hospice care at home for children back in the 1990s. Heather, the first Pepper nurse, began the development of the Pepper nursing service. Over time, the number of Pepper nurses grew to a total of 8 and, with financial support from Pepper, they were able to manage a caseload of over 100 children at any one time.
In recent years, Pepper also funded a Play Service at Rennie Grove Peace Hospice Care offering specialist play services for some of the most isolated children and families on the caseload. Sadly, Rennie Grove Peace is also closing this service.
Helen & Douglas House and Keech Hospice both have excellent play services available to all the children on the caseload. Pepper is already investigating how best to optimise the play services available across the two counties and we hope to announce our plans later this year.
What is certain is that The Pepper Foundation intends to ensure that children’s hospice at home care continues across Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire for as long as it is needed.
By the end of March 2025, we intend to have put a 3-year rolling grant programme in place for Helen & Douglas House and Keech Hospice. This will focus on Pepper-funded nurses working in Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire and establish robust, trusting partnerships to ensure that children with life-limiting or life-threatening conditions and their families will continue to receive the care at home that they need and deserve.
Both Helen & Douglas House and Keech Hospice have already been awarded two grants from Pepper totalling £250,000, the first was made last March and the second is due before the end of March 2025.
All of this means that our fundraising needs to grow urgently to meet this increasing commitment. We are in a strong position and we are already planning ways to do this.
So, put simply, Pepper is still doing what it has always done (and more!) and needs your support and fundraising more than ever before!
Everyone at Pepper is committed and excited as we move forward with purpose and energy.
Further information is available from Robert Breakwell, founder and chair of trustees, robert.breakwell@pepper.org.uk or on 07801 623057.
