Get involved

If you’re interested in finding out how to become a Compassionate Neighbour and volunteer in your local area, please click here to contact your nearest hospice. Your local hospice team will be able to talk to you about what’s involved and when the next training sessions will be.

How can my hospice start a Compassionate Neighbours project?

All you will need is a Compassionate Neighbours project manager – experience from across the participating hospices shows that you’ll need a Project Manager to start with.  Hospices find it relatively easy to secure funding for such posts.  The hospices currently involved in the project can help you with advice for your funding bid, or with any business cases for your Board.

After a chat with the Chair of the Compassionate Neighbours Programme Board, we will send you an MOU to sign and once you’ve done that, we will ‘buddy’ your hospice with one of our partner hospices – perhaps one you already know or have a relationship with, or one that is nearest to you. The partner hospice will help provide support and advice on how to set up your project.  We recommend that at least your CN project manager and maybe one or two others from your hospice participate in your buddy hospice’s CN training to learn and observe how the training works for Compassionate Neighbours.  There is no cost to do this, (except any travel costs you incur to get to the partner hospice).

Your hospice will belong to the Project Lead’s group that meet regularly online (and sometimes in person) to seek support and learn from each other – and you may like to join the Programme Board when a place becomes available, this is made up of a mix of CEO’s, Project Leads and Compassionate Neighbours of partner hospices to help shape the national programme. 

However, it is important to stress that every hospice shapes their Compassionate Neighbours project to what their own local community needs.

There are no large joining fees or training fees involved – we simply ask each hospice to pay £1,000 each into a jointly held fund which pays for shared items such as this website, attendance at national conferences such as the Hospice UK conference and shared literature. A smaller annual fee is also payable as needed to keep this collaborative work going. That’s it – we don’t ask for any other fees.