Care
Skanda Vale Hospice adds nights, inspectors call the care kind
The hospice in the hills is stretching monthly respite from four nights to six. It still does not offer end of life beds. That is the next fight, and it will be paid for by volunteers and cake, not a health board contract.
Skanda Vale Hospice sits at Saron, on the Carmarthenshire side of the Teifi country, and takes adults with life limiting illness from this county, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire. Care is free. Anyone can refer: the patient, a relative, a GP. Healthcare Inspectorate Wales walked the building on 21 and 22 January. The report, published in April, called the care kind, dignified and person centred. All 55 staff and volunteers the inspectors surveyed said they would recommend the place as somewhere to work or give time.
From March the monthly inpatient respite block grew from four nights to six, Tuesday to Monday, up to six people at a time. In 2025 the old pattern supported 42 patients and 28 family members. There is a day hospice and a remote companionship service. End of life care is not provided on site yet. The hospice is open about that. The extra nights are described as the base for a later 24 hour dying-in-place service. Welsh hospice finance is ugly. Sector figures the hospice itself quotes say nearly 30 percent of Welsh hospices have already cut beds or services, and more than 70 percent of those with inpatient units expect closures. Skanda Vale is trying to go the other way.
A volunteer clinical team
The hospice says it is the only one in the UK whose clinical team is mostly volunteers. Eleven registered nurses, 24 healthcare assistants, nine patient assessors and two doctors give time. A small paid nursing core keeps the paperwork and the continuity legal. Senior management is volunteer too. Nurses and carers who can stay the week get a room at Skanda Hafan, travel money and a uniform. The ask after training is at least twelve shifts a year, in blocks of two days or more in the same respite week.
Lead nurse Kiera Jones won an RCN Wales Nurse of the Year award and has since been given an MBE for services to nursing. She keeps saying the honour is the team’s. In late July the hospice threw a lawn party that doubled as a goodbye to Tina, six years as volunteer head of operations and then head of care delivery. That is how a place this size marks time: a twmpath, a space hopper race, and a nurse with a gong.
HIW still found jobs to do, including a proper staff immunisation policy. Kind care does not cancel regulation. The building and the curved garden, which volunteers cut from mud and which forced a redesign of the hospice itself, were praised as part of the calm the inspectors felt walking through.
How you get in
Call 01559 371222 or use skandavalehospice.org. Adults over 18 with a life limiting diagnosis and personal care needs. Coffee mornings are the last Thursday of the month, 10.30 to 12.30. The summer fete in June pulled a few hundred people last year and a few thousand pounds. Fundraising walks, including overseas challenges by volunteers, still pay for nights that the state does not.
The Chronicle will report when, or if, the first end of life bed opens, and what that does to the volunteer roster that already carries the respite week.