Accessing our care

St Wilfrid’s supports adults (aged 18 and older) in Eastbourne, Seaford, Hailsham, Uckfield, Heathfield and all the points in between with any life-limiting illness.

We provide specialist palliative and end of life care and support to people with life-limiting conditions who need help with specific symptoms or challenges. This can be at any stage of illness, not just at the very end of life.

Our care is provided by a variety of healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses, therapists and counsellors. And it is offered in a number of ways: outpatient appointments at the hospice, on our Inpatient Unit, home visits, and through our 24/7 advice line (Hospice Line).

How to access our care

If you think you need our support, please speak to your GP or a healthcare professional who is currently involved in your care and ask them to refer you to us.

Once we receive your referral, our multidisciplinary team will check that it meets our criteria and make sure we can offer the right service for you. If we can’t accept the referral we will let the person who referred you know.

If you have previously been a patient of the hospice and feel you would benefit from further support speak to your GP or a healthcare professional who is currently involved in your care about being re-referred.

You can self-refer to our bereavement services if you are grieving the death of someone who was cared for by the hospice.

Bereavement support

Referral information

What happens next?

If you are accepted as a patient of the hospice, a member of our team will contact you to talk about your goals and the services we can offer to help you achieve them. We will invite you into the hospice for an initial assessment, or we may visit you a home if needed.

As you reach your goals we will talk to you about next steps. There may be other things that are important to you that we can help with, we may refer you to another provider, or we may discharge you from our services. You can be re-referred if you feel you need our support again.

Paying for care

We do not charge patients and families for our specialist palliative and end of life care. This is thanks to funding from the NHS (which makes up about 30% of our funding) and the generosity of our local community, who contribute around 70% of our funding.

We sometimes offer additional services that need to be paid for. We will always be clear when a service we are offering is a paid-for service, and you will always be given the opportunity to say no. The money raised through these additional services is used to fund our core (free) services.

Our services do not include hands-on personal care at home. We can help you to access care that is funded if you are eligible.

Did you know, we are a charity?

It costs almost £22,000 a day to provide our specialist services for our local community.

We provide support for patients and families with no charge to them, and get only a small amount of funding from the NHS, meaning that over 70% of our funding comes from donations, fundraising, gifts in wills and our shops.

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