Virtual Hospice CEO Group
The Virtual Hospice CEO Group meets monthly to discuss and address strategic issues facing the sector with the input of an expert external speaker.
The Virtual Hospice CEO Group
Leading a hospice in today’s environment is uniquely difficult: funding pressures, complex regulations, partnerships, culture, and sustainability.
The Virtual Hospice CEO Group offers a high-trust, expert-facilitated monthly forum where hospice chief executives can gather to challenge assumptions, test strategies, share hard truths, and learn from peers.
Each session combines peer-led discussion with external expert insight, ensuring that every meeting is fresh, relevant, and fully applicable to your role. Liz Searle, CEO at Keech Hospice has been a member since 2021.
‘I always enjoy attending the sessions. We have a great variety of speakers and I always come away with some really beneficial insights or ideas. Highly recommended!’
With numbers capped to maintain intimacy and confidentiality, you’ll find inspiration and practical value that you can bring back to your hospice.
Join if you want:
• A safe space to discuss existential, strategic and operational issues
• Access to tested ideas, case studies and outsider perspectives
• Peer support to reduce isolation in a high-stakes role
• A forum to push yourself and your hospice forward
Membership of the group is £160 plus VAT per session. This also entitles you to 10% reduction in charges for other services we provide, plus other benefits.
Below are details about recent sessions. If you are interested in joining the group, please contact me.
November 2025
Radical Hope - Daisy O'Reilly-Weinstock
It was great to have Daisy O'Reilly-Weinstock with us this month - her second session after discussing The Future of Charity' report a couple of years ago.
Daisy pushed us to re-think core concepts and assumptions, whilst proposing her model of ‘radical hope’ as a framework to inspire us in challenging times. Two of the quotes from her latest report show her passion.
‘Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the girt of the cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth and she rise for another go.’
‘Hope is co-created. It grows in proximity, in relationship, and shared ownership. It means moving beyond participation as a gesture and into participation. The communities you serve are not just recipients. They are co-builders of change. Shift your posture. Share the pen. Build structures that hold more than one voice at a time.’
October 2025 Transformative Funding
The commitment to invest £60 million over 6 years in end of life care by the NW London ICB has raised huge interest across the hospice sector in recent months. So, we were delighted to be joined by Jane Wheeler, CEO of Harlington Hospice one of the four independent services who will benefit from this funding.
Jane’s dual perspective as the former NW London ICB Director and now CEO of a hospice offered rare insight into what made this work.
I could write several pages of learning points from what Jane said to us. But these are three of the key ones.
🧱 1. Build Brick by Brick — and Don’t Start with Funding. The partnership began not with a plea for money, but with a shared commitment to equity of services across communities.
🤝 2. Co-Commissioning Is More Than a Buzzword. Hospices weren’t just seen as providers — they were positioned as co-commissioners.
🧩 3. Present as One Voice. The four charitable hospices aligned messaging, resolved any differences offline, and showed up united. The benefits of working in such a collaborative manner have been seen elsewhere in the country, such as West Yorkshire and Kent.
In what has been such a difficult year for so many hospices, this was an uplifting session.
September 2025 The Collaborative CEO Office
A fascinating session of The Virtual Hospice CEO Group this month.
Three members of the Prince of Wales Hospice Collaborative CEO Office shared insights into their unique leadership model. Under this, six Directors jointly share the CEO responsibilities equally, with no single person being the 'first among equals'. They operate in a collaborative and values-driven manner, with clear protocols for decision-making.
Over the four years it has been in place, three of the original six directors have moved on. But the model has proven to be robust and effective enough to continue. Indeed, new members have brought fresh perspectives and new skills to the group.
Joint CEOs are, of course, not uncommon in the charity sector today. But our discussions concluded that the more enlarged Collaborative CEO approach has distinct advantages over this model.
Of course, this way of working also has its challenges. However, in a world where more CEOs (whether single or joint) are feeling the pressures of their roles, the Collective CEO approach offers a different way of doing things.
August 2025 Nigel Hartley MBE
It was a pleasure to welcome Nigel Hartley MBE as the speaker at the latest session.
Nigel has spent over 40 years in the End of Life care sector, but will shortly step down from his role as CEO of the Mountbatten Hospice Group.
Nigel shared his experiences working at the London Lighthouse in the early years of the AIDS crisis and then reflected on his time at St Christopher’s, including getting to know Dame Cicely Saunders.
He moved onto his time at Mountbatten, in particular the merger between the Isle of Wight’s service and the NHS unit in Southampton, the challenges of hospice collaboration and the success of their annual ‘Walk the Wight’ event which now raises over £500,000!
In recent months his time has been dominated by the Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB’s decision to withdraw £1.4 million in funding from their services, a move now partly but not permanently reversed.
Nigel was also incredibly open talking about the vulnerabilities and self-doubt he has had in leadership, but also the power of being fully open with staff and volunteers about threats and challenges.
Thanks for speaking so openly and honestly Nigel. And all the best with whatever the future has in hold for you.
June 2025
21 Reflections on Organisational Turnarounds
I've never met anybody who came into civil into a civil society because they fancied doing charity turnaround. We're all motivated by something very, very different, but sometimes we have to do this.
And if we can do it in a way that is true to our values and centric to service users, it's better, frankly, than turnaround being done by people who don't care.’
These were just some of the wise words that Simon Hopkins shared with the group. There were many more.
In the most challenging environment the sector has ever faced, hearing the reflections and advice from someone with vast experience in turnarounds in the commercial and charity sectors was invaluable.
As Simon said, the skills needed are as much, if not more, around communication and empathy as financial. Some of his 21 points might appear to be common sense. But in the intense pressure of a turnaround situation, this may not be as clear.
The skill set needed in such scenarios are rarely included in management training. But in today's world, they are likely to be ones that we will all need at some time in our career.
July 2025 A Tale of Two Hospices
In the words of one former hospice CEO, ‘It used to be a risk to collaborate; now it’s a risk not to.’ However, talking about it is one thing; successfully putting it into action is quite another.
At this session, Colin Twomey, CEO of St Wilfrid's in Eastbourne and Karen Clarke his counterpart from St Michael’s in Hastings, told us how the two hospices have developed their partnership.
This started with sharing a Finance Director in 2021. They now have seven joint roles, including three at Director level, the other two being the clinical and medical posts. They also work together in a number of other ways.
A MoU underpins the partnership and they also have an annual joint trustees meeting, as well as six monthly Chair and CEO catch ups. Karen and Colin openly shared the challenges as well as the benefits of their relationship. Also, some of the opportunities they are looking at going forward.
All in all, a great example of collaboration in practice.
May 2025 Kate Lee
Kate Lee is one of the most admired CEOs in the voluntary sector. Indeed, her reputation for how she has led the transformation of the Alzheimer’s Society in the last few years spreads far beyond the charity world. However, Kate’s first CEO role was actually at Myton Hospice in Warwickshire between 2010 and 2015.
Speaking to the group, Kate reflected on how much she had learnt in her time there which helped her in later roles, for example from meeting patients and their families. Interestingly, she said the change management she led at the hospice was the most complex in her career as evidence of the need for change was not so obvious as in other organisations.
Kate is about to step down from Alzheimer’s Society. Although she has no definite plans as yet, she did assure us she will most likely be back in the sector sooner rather than later!
April 2025
Getting the Best out of LinkedIn
Michelle Benson is probably best known for her seemingly never-ending pictures that show the challenges, pitfalls and misunderstandings around the world of fundraising. These regularly appear on LinkedIn and have helped her build up a large following.
However, she is also an expert on how best to use the medium as a way to generate new business, and not simply as an awareness tool. Her session with the group was instructive in many of the ways to do this. And made many of us realise how little we really knew about how LinkedIn works.
March 2025
Ivor Williams
Ivor Williams is an award winning designer who has been involved in setting many innovative initiatives around death and dying, across all ages, including ReSPECT and Palliate, now used across the NHS. He has previously worked at Imperial College Healthcare, Accurx and Hellix and has also worked closely with St Christopher’s.
Ivor took us through some of the challenges and opportunities of using innovative design led approaches to tech enabled end of life care services. But also, how sometimes our cultures can be the biggest barriers, whether this be down to overt risk aversion or paternalistic views of patients and carers ability to look after themselves.
February 2025
Stephen Greenhalgh & Heather Richardson
This month we were joined by Stephen Greenhalgh, formerly CEO of St Catherine’s Hospice, Preston and Heather Richardson, who has served in a variety of senior roles across the sector.
Stephen led a discussion on some of the tensions and challenges facing hospices which came out of his recently completed PhD. His semiotics outlining these and which cover a range of questions, as shown below, provide a great framework for reflection and debate on the future development of hospices.
- Why did hospices form in the 20th century?
- Why are hospices here in the 21st century?
- What is the hospice idea or concept?
- What are the roles of hospices? Who owns death?
- How are hospices developing?
- What kind of hospice do you want to be?
January 2025
Dan Hartman, Consultant Community Geriatrician
Dan expressed his passion for improving the care of older people and his experience with the Jean Bishop Integrated Care Centre, which focuses on frailty care in the community for residents in Hull and East Riding. He is also a Trustee of Dove House Hospice in Hull.
Dan outlined the Centre's journey from 2017. They were already delivering intermediate care to comprehensive geriatric assessment in the community from three settings. They are now offering proactive assessment in the community e.g. at 200+ care homes and include other teams such as neurology, dementia, respiratory services, etc.
He also mentioned the establishment of an emergency advice and guidance line, an urgent community response, and a hospital at home virtual ward model. Dan also emphasized the potential role of palliative care in this space, especially given all the projections for an increasingly elderly and frail population in the years to come.
