Richard House Children's Hospice

About Richard House Children's Hospice

Richard House is a modern purpose-built hospice. Services started with homecare, launched in June 2000. This was closely followed by the introduction of a daycare service in November. A befriending service was launched in January 2001, and the eight-bed residential unit - with two family flats - opened at the end of 2002. The hospice is now fully completed and all its services are operational.

The Association of Children's Hospices (ACH) defines a children's hospice as follows:
"Children's Hospices provide respite and terminal care, both in the hospice and at home, for children who suffer from conditions which mean they will (probably) die before they reach adulthood. They are dedicated to providing love, care and support for the whole family. They offer a listening ear, a helping hand and more. They offer friendship and a sense of community; sharing in the care of the very sick child; expert respite, palliative and terminal care and then support the family into bereavement for as long as is wanted."

Richard House is based in Beckton in East London, right on the edge of Docklands and close to London City Airport and the ExCeL Exhibition Centre. It cares for children and young people between the ages of 0 and 19, living primarily in Greater London.

The Hospice is run by Richard House Trust, a charity founded by Anthea Hare in the early 1990s. Anthea had a brother named Richard, who died when he was a young man following a lifetime of profound disability. This experience, along with her professional background as a children's nurse, led Anthea to have the vision for a respite service, in a home from home setting, that has become a reality in Richard House.

Plans for Richard House, and the services it would offer, were developed around findings from research into the local need for sucha facility and further findings from Newham's Dept. of Health Pilot Project Programme for Children with Life Threatening Illness.

Before Richard House there was no children hospice in London at all - a city of some 8 million people where, statistics tell us, there are likely to be at least 1,920 children with a life limiting/threatening condition. It is estimated that half of these children will require active palliative care, and during any one year, 300 will die.

There are a greater number of children per head living in London that in most of the country, and a number of boroughs close to the hospice also have some of the highest incidence of HIV infection amongst children. All this is set against a background of the richness of all the culturally diverse communities of one of the world's greatest capital cities.


Registered Charity No. 1059029.

To learn more about our work take a look at our website.