A grant of £99,960 supported a new initiative, Helpforce, to explore the design and testing of an End of Life Care intervention in five NHS hospitals. The grant was used to support families and patients to ensure that no one dies alone in hospital and in addition allows hospital based patients to be discharged with support to die in the place of their choice. 

This is aimed at reducing the number of days in the last year of life that people spend - 19.4 days in NHS emergency beds on average (1,676,000 emergency admissions, estimated annual cost £2.5bn). 78,000 people currently volunteer in acute trusts – Helpforce seeks to double this number.