Mountbatten’s 2024 Conference is underway on the Isle of Wight, hosting delegates from across the country, focusing on the theme of 'Achievement and Adversity: How do we develop and sustain resilience hospice care?'.

This year’s gathering is being held at Northwood House in Cowes and opened with comments from Mountbatten CEO, Nigel Hartley, MBE.

A leading voice in the sector, with 40 years of healthcare experience, Nigel said: “We are in the most critical situation that I have ever seen in my career, yet we are still managing to achieve.

“I swing between being quite depressed and very angry about the current situation and that’s not a good place to be.”

There is a well-documented funding crisis around hospice care and some hospices around the country are closing, while others are making cuts and redundancies.

For its part, Mountbatten is due to engage with members of the community, to ask which services are most important to them.

Nigel told delegates there has been a 250 per cent rise in those who need hospice care, across the Isle of Wight and Hampshire in recent years, with no extra funding from the NHS.

It costs around £20 million per year to deliver Mountbatten’s services, across the two countries (around £11 million each).

Around one-third funded by the NHS, via commissioners at the Integrated Care Board, Mountbatten is two-thirds funded by charitable donations. This amounts to around £15 million each year.

The NHS and the people who work in it are extraordinary, said Nigel who was keen to point out he does not want extra money from the health service - just consistency.

He called for an acknowledgement that Mountbatten – and hospice organisations like it – are filling gaps in NHS care.

I want the conference to be a “space to be together, to find the strength to carry on, in the midst of all this,” said Nigel.

“We need a new definition of health. People will continue to die and that’s important to acknowledge.”