FOI 2026/1721

The questions below which I would like you to answer are designed to help me understand:

• how much money NHS Greater Manchester ICB spent on hospice services for babies, children and young people with life-threatening conditions, life-shortening conditions or with severe medical complexity. in 2025/26, excluding the £26 million of funding that NHS England asked every ICB to distribute.
• how many babies, children and young people with life-threatening conditions, life-shortening conditions or with severe medical complexity in the NHS Greater Manchester ICB footprint accessed hospice care during 2025/26
• how much money NHS Greater Manchester ICB plans to spend on hospice services for babies, children and young people with life-threatening conditions, life-shortening conditions or with severe medical complexity during 2026/27, excluding any funding it will distribute from the first‑year allocation of the £80 million three‑year funding commitment for children’s hospices that NHS England has asked ICBs to pass on.

Where your integrated care board came into existence on or after 1 April 2026 through the merger or reconfiguration of one or more predecessor integrated care boards (ICBs), please treat this request as applying to all relevant predecessor ICBs whose functions, responsibilities or records are now held by your organisation.

In these circumstances, responses should include all relevant spending, activity, and data relating to those predecessor ICBs for the periods covered by this request. Please provide an aggregated total for the current ICB footprint, alongside a clearly labelled breakdown by each predecessor ICB.

In order to help you meet my request, I provide definitions to the terms I use in my questions below:

Life-threatening conditions

Conditions for which disease-modifying or life-prolonging treatment may be available but may fail, or where intensive therapies and interventions are required to sustain or prolong life. These conditions carry a significant risk of premature death even if treatment is pursued.

Life-shortening conditions

Conditions where death in childhood or early adulthood is likely due to the progressive nature of the condition or the absence of effective disease-modifying treatment.

Severe medical complexity

Children and young people with severe medical complexity and vulnerability, including multi-system involvement, profound neurological impairment, technology dependence, or extreme frailty, where there is a significant risk of life-threatening events.

Children and young people

Babies, children and young people aged 0-25.

My questions

1. Please set out how much money your integrated care board and/or any predecessor integrated care boards it now represents spent on hospice care for babies, children and young people with life-threatening conditions, life-shortening conditions or with severe medical complexity between 6 April 2025 and 5 April 2026. Please provide a total, in addition to a breakdown of funding per children’s hospice organisation.

1. Please set out the arrangement through which this money was paid in 2025/26 – was this by block contract, standard contract, service level agreement, grant arrangement, spot purchases or other by means.

1. Please set out how many babies, children and young people with life-threatening conditions, life-shortening conditions or with severe medical complexity who live in your integrated care board footprint and/or the footprint of any predecessor integrated care boards it now represents accessed hospice care between 6 April 2025 and 5 April 2026.

1. Please set out how many babies, children and young people with life-threatening conditions, life-shortening conditions or with severe medical complexity who live in your integrated care board footprint could benefit from children’s hospice care.

1. Please set out how much money your integrated care board plans to spend on hospice care for babies, children and young people with life-threatening conditions, life-shortening conditions or with severe medical complexity between 6 April 2026 and 5 April 2027, excluding any funding it will distribute from the first‑year allocation of the £80 million three‑year funding commitment for children’s hospices that NHS England has asked ICBs to pass on.

1. Please set out the arrangement through which this money will be paid in 2026/27 – by block contract, standard contract, service level agreement, grant arrangement, spot purchases or other by means.

1. NHS Greater Manchester’s Financial year runs for the period 1^st April to 31^st March, rather than the tax year commencing 6^th April. Therefore, throughout this response, information is provided in respect of the financial year, 1^st April 2025 to 31^st March 2026.

The following funding was provided in 2025/26 specifically to the below CYP Hospices:

• Derian House (NHS England funded) – £0.740m
• Forget Me Not Childrens Hospice – £0.013m
• Francis House – £0.906m
• Total – £1.659m

2. The Derian House Greater Manchester Children and Young People (CYP) Hospice payment was incorporated into an NHS Standard Contract with Derian House (as funded by NHSE). In previous years, this was paid by NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB, and recharged to NHS GM, but in 2025/26 this was invoiced directly by the Hospice.

For 25/26, the Francis House CYP Hospice payments was paid by direct invoice via a contract.

The expenditure with Forget Me Not Childrens Hospice was a grant payment paid by direct invoice for the period up to October 2025, from which point it was transacted via contractual payment.

3. NHS GM does not hold this information.
4. NHS GM is unable to answer this question as it is considered subjective, and the number of children and young people who may benefit would require examination of individual patient records to consider specific conditions, which the ICB does not have access to.
5. At the time of receiving your Freedom of Information request, NHS Greater Manchester’s budget for the year 2026/27 has not been set and agreed with NHS England. Therefore, this information is not currently available.
6. Based on Greater Manchester’s review of specialist palliative care commissioning, it is likely that all these agreements will be placed on NHS Standard Contracts.