Life-and-death matters - The Times 5th November 2007

When Terry McDonnell became the chief executive of St Ann’s Hospice after years in the NHS, he got a shock: “Until then, I thought that fundraising involved a few dances and some tins. I had no idea it was such hard work. “Just to stand still, St Ann’s needs £9 million a year, of which we have to find £6 million. We live or die by our budgets. Last year we had a shortfall of £100,000, enough for three specialist nurses.” Terry, who was a psychiatric social worker before running mental health services in Manchester, has been the head of the hospice since 2002: “Although my brother died in St Ann’s in 1985 (from cancer, aged 47), I knew little about palliative care and the hospice movement. We cover 16 constituencies, and every MP supports what we do. But the Government sees hospices as providing a small role in end-of-life care: 60 per cent of people die in hospitals, and 5 to 15 per cent in hospices.

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