Tom Hill, who served as chief executive of Helen & Douglas House from 2004-14, writes about his concerns following the closure of Douglas House in June. The decision came after the charity said it could not afford to keep running its adult services there. Helen House, its hospice for babies and children, remains open.

In the Oxford Mail on June 6, Sister Frances Dominica, founder of Helen & Douglas House, spoke of her hopes of once again playing a part in the two special hospices she set up.

Regarding the charity’s financial crisis she drew attention to previously loyal supporters losing confidence in the 'governance and administration of the charity as it now is'.

She went on to say that a number of high-profile donors told her that they will not give to the charity until she is back on board.

In response a spokesperson for Helen & Douglas House is reported as saying that there was no plan to reverse her removal from the charity.

A subsequent statement attempts to leave the reader with the impression that the charity’s current financial woes 'are not related to Sister Frances’ retirement'.

Current financial difficulties of Helen & Douglas House may not be related to Sister Frances’ retirement, but it would be naïve in the extreme for the charity's trustees to think that they are unrelated to former supporters’ perceptions of how she was treated in the past three years.

This, and a litany of other bad news stories that emanated from Helen & Douglas House in that period, will without doubt have affected the community support received by the charity, and contributed to the current financial malaise.

Public perception that Sister Frances has been the victim of a miscarriage of justice will, after the passage of nearly four years since the Crime Prosecution Service dropped its case against her, have had a negative effect on fundraising.

This is borne out by a review of the charity’s statutory accounts for the three financial years ended March 31 2015, 2016 and 2017.

In the year ended March 2015, the last year in which there was still hope that Sister Frances could return, and the last year of my tenure as the charity’s chief executive, the accounts record an annual increase in total funds (a surplus) of £1.3m.

The following two years, after it became public knowledge that trustees’ ban on Sister Frances was permanent, the accounts record an eye-wateringly painful decrease in funds (a deficit) of £1.65m in 2016, and £625,00 in 2017.

I believe that the decision to close Douglas House was consequential to a substantial haemorrhaging of funds in the year to March 31 2018, for which period the charity has not yet published its accounts.

Contrary to messages put out by the trustees of Helen & Douglas House, the Care Quality Commission health regulator (CQC) stated in a letter to another palliative-care charity, of which Sister Frances is founder and a trustee, that ‘there is no requirement from CQC that prevents Sister Frances Dominica from working for Helen & Douglas House in Oxfordshire.’

Having, together with families of life-limited children, been told in 2015 that Sister Frances could not return to Helen & Douglas House because of a condition imposed by the CQC, I was totally confused by the contradiction.

If I am confused, as the charity’s former chief executive, what chance is there for members of the public trying to make sense of the hospice's ongoing ban on Sister Frances?

Especially when other children's organisations appear to continue to welcome her with open arms.

I understand that she recently returned from a visit to South Africa where, as patron of the International Children’s Palliative Care Network, she spoke at a conference and undertook engagements on behalf of Sunflower House Children’s Hospice in Bloemfontein.

Sister Frances Dominica's interview in the Oxford Mail was a very public offer of her time and support to do whatever she could to prevent Douglas House from closing, and to once again promote the charity that she founded.

The interview predates by two weeks the calamitous decision to close Douglas House, two months earlier than scheduled, without notice to staff or families.

I am not an apologist for Sister Frances: it was me, after all, who had the unenviable task of initially excluding her from Helen & Douglas House in July 2013.

The trustees of Helen & Douglas House and the charity’s chief executive have admitted that they are incapable of managing both Helen House and Douglas House with current funds.

I hope and pray that the people of Oxford and neighbouring counties will join fiercely resist any move to repurpose Douglas House in future, for anything other than the provision of specialist palliative care to young men and women, who live with the double injustice of a broken body and a short life.