- Hospice service
Hospice at Home West Cumbria
Report from 2 June 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Hospice at Home West Cumbria provides high quality, palliative and end of life care to adults within their own home or alternative residential settings, in West Cumbria. It is a registered charity providing 24-hour nursing care with personal care interventions.
Services offered include home nursing support to adults with a life limiting palliative diagnosis, approaching the last 12 months of life, and support at home, to facilitate a person’s discharge from hospital and prevent hospital admissions where possible. The support at home service is available to adults with a life limiting palliative diagnosis approaching the last 3 months of life. In addition, they offer family and bereavement support, complementary therapies and lymphoedema care.
The provider is the sole provider of specialist lymphoedema care in West Cumbria. Lymphoedema is a challenging condition that affects many people. It is a chronic condition where excess fluid is retained in the tissues causing painful swelling and can be because of cancer or cancer treatment, but it can also be caused by other non-cancer related conditions.
The provider covers 400 square miles along the western side of Cumbria, covering a scattered rural population from Maryport, to Millom and into the Eskdale and Wasdale valleys (Copeland, South Copeland and Allerdale), serving a population of around 137,000 people. It serves 16 GP practices, 4 community hospitals 1 district general hospital and all care homes and residential homes within the catchment.
Services are delivered free of charge to those who need them. Around one fifth of the provider income comes from the NHS with the remainder raised through income generating activities, legacies, trusts and grants.
Hospice at Home West Cumbria is an independent provider registered to provide the following regulated activities:
• Treatment of disease, disorder or injury.
• Diagnostic and screening procedures.
• Personal care.
We conducted this short notice announced, responsive assessment on 27 August and 28 August 2025, as a follow up to the requires improvement rating issued in 2023.
We assessed 34 quality statements across the safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led key questions.
We spoke with 11 staff including trustees, managers, clinical, and non-clinical staff at the service.
We visited clinical areas and spoke with service users, their families and carers. We looked at health care records and a range of policies, procedures and other documents relating to the running of the service.
We rated the service as good. The service had made improvements and was no longer in breach of regulations.
The provider ensured clear ceilings of care were now in place and that all staff including volunteers and trustees, undertook mandatory and safeguard training. There were processes in place to ensure effective care planning was completed for all patients receiving care. There were now systems and processes in place to ensure all information required for trustees and volunteers was completed in accordance with the provider’s policy and held in personnel files.
People's experience of this service
During our assessment, we spoke with 5 service users and family members. Feedback from service users and relatives gathered during the inspection was positive.
Feedback from clinical partners, commissioners and other healthcare stakeholders was positive.