Cotswold Care Hospice provides specialist palliative care to those living with life-limiting illnesses in Gloucestershire, though it receives less than 10% of its £2.3 million annual operating costs from the NHS and relies on community support; in order to secure long-term sustainability, the hospice aims to build a 10-bed inpatient unit and wants ideas to build community loyalty and better communicate its impact through addressing misperceptions about who it serves and how it is funded.

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http://www.cotswoldcare.org.uk/
Background
Cotswold Care Hospice is based near Minchinhampton in Gloucestershire. Founded
24 years ago, it opened a ‘state of the art’ day care centre in 2008.
Their mission is to maximise the quality of life for those people in Gloucestershire,
patients and families, living with cancer and other life-limiting illnesses.
They do this by providing specialist/generalist palliative care for adults over age of
18 from pre-diagnosis onwards – Cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, Motor Neurone
Disease, respiratory/heart diseases and other chronic/long-term conditions
Care is currently provided in 3 main ways – via the Day Hospice, outpatient services
and the Hospice at Home service, and is delivered in close collaboration with
primary health care teams, hospitals, community palliative care teams and other
community health and social services.
With some of the most modern palliative care facilities in the county and serving
the local population of more than 568,000 – the hospice employs 100 staff,
supported by more than 600 volunteers, and cares for more than 500 people and
their families every year.
All of the care is provided free of charge. It costs £2.3 million a year to run the
hospice. They receive less than 10 per cent from the NHS. For the remaining £2.1
million they rely on the generosity of the public and in particular the people of
Gloucestershire. They receive money through legacies, voluntary contributions,
fundraising and through their 13 charity shops.
In the past few years, they have pioneered Cotswold Midnight Walks as a way of
raising funds in an innovative way, with women walking 5 or 10 miles and men
being marshalls along the route.
Having recently re-branded, the focus is now shifting towards securing the long-
term sustainability of the hospice. One of the principal ways to do that will be to
secure a bedded unit at the hospice.
Investigations are under way to look at the possibility of building a 10-bed unit at
a cost of £2 million. This has the potential to dramatically increase their ability to
secure additional NHS funding.

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The brief for Ecclesiastical does Good for Nothing
The brief has 2 interlinked challenges based on building long-term sustainability
for the hospice
1. How can the hospice create a practical, relevant yet inspiring way to
build long-term support and loyalty from the local community?
2. How do we tell the story of the hospice and where it’s heading in a more
compelling way in order to make it easier for people to understand the
depth and breadth of what they do?
In order to help shape potential solutions, there are a number of myths about the
hospice that need busting….
First, it’s perceived as a place that people go to die
Yet, 68% of the people they care for go on to lead a normal and healthy life
Second, it’s perceived as being part of the NHS and therefore fully funded
Yet, the NHS provides only 10% of the funding
Third, it’s perceived as something you have to pay for or only for the rich
Yet, all the services are free and are available to everybody in the local community
One of the key challenges is to understand how, beyond having tea parties and
coffee mornings, the local community could provide more long-term support for
the charity. And how the hospice can play more of a role in the community and
especially in getting awareness in some of the poorer parts of the county.
From a loyalty perspective, some of the patients and their families stay involved
with the hospice as volunteers or donors however many of them don’t.
So, for example, could we explore different kinds of membership ideas as
‘products and services’? As a comparison, Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust send out a
magazine once a year to their 18,000 members as part of their £25 a year
membership fee.
Specifically, they are looking for an idea or series of ideas that can be implemented
by their team that work across patients, carers, volunteers, local community and
local businesses. The more finished, tested and ready to implement the ideas are,
the better.
What do we have to work with?
Potential to visit to the Hospice and speak to range of people there
Interview local people at the next Midnight Walk on Friday Sep 2nd in the evening
New branding guidelines and the website
Previous marketing and fundraising materials
13 local charity shops
A piece of empty retail space to test out ideas ‘live’ (TBC)