Linder Foundation Hospice Grants 2023 - End of Life Care in Prisons

Overview

Hospice UK’s report, Dying Behind Bars, is the result of in-depth analysis of the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman’s Fatal Incident reports (reports of investigations into deaths in prisons in England) as well as close engagement with hospice services and other health and social care providers who support people in prison at the end of life.

This report is England-focused but they want to improve end of life care in prisons across the UK so this programme welcomes submissions from all UK hospices. Among the challenges this report identified were the inappropriate use of restraints, delayed or absent consideration of compassionate release, and care that is inequivalent to that received in the community.

The Linder Foundation grants programme will build on the first round of grants awarded in March 2023.

Grants

Grants of up to £15,000 are available to support projects running over a period of 12 months.

Total available funding in this grant round is £80,000. We expect to award between five and seven grants in this round.

Eligibility

Only independent hospices that are members of Hospice UK incl, Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are eligible to apply.

The proposed work

Examples of work that could be funded include:

• Developing and testing new approaches, such as training programmes focused on the needs of people at end of life for clinical and non-clinical prison staff
• Funding a new post to coordinate engagement/build relationships with and explore ways to support and collaborate with local prisons and specialist organisations supporting prison health and care services for palliative end of life or bereaved people in custody.
• Rolling out of practice models already tested and indicating positive outcomes, in some hospices, such as on-demand end of life care advice to prisons, delivering direct clinical care and bereavement support in prison and providing training to prison staff.
• Setting up (or enabling access to) an Advice Line for prison staff to access support and advice relating to palliative and end of life care and bereavement.

Financial situation

If they receive more applications than they can fund and the project has been assessed and is strong enough to be in contention for a grant, then hospices’ free reserve levels may be taken into account. For the purpose of this grant programme:

• free reserves are defined as all reserves with the exception of endowed or restricted funds and any reserves represented by tangible fixed assets
• running costs are defined as total expenditure as per the most recent audited accounts.
• where the hospice operates one or more trading subsidiaries, the figures are to be based on the consolidated levels of reserves and expenditure for the group.

Partnership working

They strongly encourage new projects to be developed and implemented in partnership with others, e.g. local prisons, hospitals, commissioning bodies, community groups, other voluntary sector partners and local government. This is so that they complement existing provision and are truly integrated in systemic plans to maximize a project’s reach and to enhance its potential for sustainability. They would also expect that a hospice work with at least one partner which has proven in-depth knowledge and expertise of the prison system or working with people in prison to ensure the project is fit for purpose.

Where a project is a collaboration between a hospice and other providers (e.g. NHS or social care) the lead applicant must be a member of Hospice UK. As already mentioned, it is important that letters of support from partners are submitted along with your application. As a minimum they would expect a letter from a member of the Prison Senior Leadership Team endorsing your project and outlining why it would benefit people in their prison.

Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) is a key part of your project. They actively encourage each project to include evidence of wider involvement and consultation with current and potential future service users of the project.

Organisational support

The project lead could need dedicated time to undertake the proposed work and full support from the organisation to execute necessary change to culture and practice.

The organisation will need to demonstrate that the developments will continue beyond the end of the grant period. The chief executive or equivalent at the hospice will be asked to write and sign a statement of support on hospice headed paper.

Eligible costs

For the purpose of this grant programme, they consider a ‘project’ to be a discrete range of activities with a clear purpose, designed to bring about change. These activities would normally incur costs over a variety of items, which could include:

• Staff salary. Funding can cover full-time or part-time staffing, or a combination of both
• Equipment
• Travel
• Staff training.

It is expected that the majority of the grant would go towards implementation costs of the service. However, a range of different items should be budgeted for and all must be directly relevant to the project.