HEALTH bosses are set to hand Helen & Douglas House a six-figure sum as they look for a way to fund the struggling hospice and help secure its future.

Adult services at the East Oxford hospice will still fold in August due to financial pressures, but an NHS body in Oxfordshire has pledged £100,000 as they being to work together to find a way of working together in the future for the first time.

Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (OCCG) agreed the funding last month following the furore over the charity’s plight, and it is hoped to could be the first step towards longer-term financial backing.

It comes after 48,200 people signed a petition calling for help to save adult services, which branded current government funding for the hospice ‘pathetic’.

A spokesperson for Helen & Douglas House in Magdalen Road said: “We welcome support from our local MPs and the public asking for extra funding for Helen & Douglas House from the government.

“We have had initial productive discussions with OCCG about an initial contribution of £100,000 from them for children’s palliative care, which is positive news.

“When this funding arrives, it will help to ensure we continue to provide vital care to local families with terminally ill children and young people.”

The money will go directly to Helen and Douglas House to fund a joint piece of work to look at the best way to provide specialist palliative care services for children in the future.

The hospice spokesperson said the cash would not go far enough to stop Douglas House from closing at the end of July, however, and services for 18-35 year-olds are still set to be scrapped as the hospice’s focus fall back to babies and children.

But she added: “Longer term, we are also pleased to report that we will be part of the Oxfordshire CCG’s commissioning plan for end-of-life care, which now includes children.

“However the financial implications are yet to be determined.”

OCCG buys healthcare services for residents in the county to use, and currently supports other end of life care specialists, including Oxford’s Sobell House and Nettlebed’s Sue Ryder Hospice.

But it does not currently commission this sort of care especially for children - unlike several CCGs in neighbouring counties, which do buy services from Helen & Douglas House.

In the hospice’s initial statement in January, revealing the major scaling back of its operation, it stated: “One of the contributors to this [financial] challenge is the different approaches taken and levels of financial support given by local clinical commissioning groups.

“Many support the charity but OCCG does not.

“Over 40 per cent of the care we provide to children in Helen House is to children who live in Oxfordshire.

“We have discussed this with them on many occasions.”

Just 12 per cent of the charity’s £5.2m annual running costs are covered by CCGs and local authorities.

Oxford East MP Anneliese Dodds and Oxford West and Abingdon MP Layla Moran have lobbied for more Oxfordshire support for the hospice, and Ms Moran called a House of Commons debate last month to raise her concerns.

Reacting to the £100,000 announcement, Ms Dodds said: “I am really pleased to see that OCCG has decided to support Helen & Douglas House in this way.

“The hospice provides an essential service to families at a very difficult time, and I know is very widely respected internationally as well as nationally.

“We were in a very strange situation before where other CCGs supported the hospice but not Oxfordshire’s, so it is good to see this beginning to be rectified.”

During the parliamentary debate, Ms Moran described the hospice as ‘incredibly important’ and added: “It really shouldn’t take this petition to get to the point where finally the CCG is starting to listen – it’s ridiculous.”

The petition was set up by Zoe and Adrian Tandy from Gloucestershire, whose late daughter Lauren received care at Douglas House.

They said the hospice helped families through the ‘worst time of their lives’.

Julia Stackhouse, a spokeswoman for OCCG, said palliative care services are kept under review and Helen & Douglas House can bid for contracts.

She added: “OCCG is keen to look at a more collaborative approach to end of life commissioning once the current contract for adult hospices finishes in September 2019.

“This would involve groups of organisations getting together to provide care and would help to support smaller providers, like Helen & Douglas House.

“OCCG is keen to pilot collaborative working with Helen & Douglas House and has offered £100,000 this year for a project to work with the CCG and providers, to look at the palliative care pathway for children across the county and what needs to be provided post 2019.”

According to the hospice’s 2016-17 annual accounts, it received £318,000 from NHS and local authority contributions to its care, plus £280,000 from an NHS hospice grant - compared to £3.7m in donations and legacies.