SPOT: St Catherine's Hospice Midnight Walk

 SPOT: a slightly different format to the Roundtable discussions where we step back from the debate to Spotlight a social initiative, local event or charity. Saturday 6th June and it's the Midnight Walk 2026!

Orange T-shirts, glitter, LED tutus, and a range of routes from 2miles to 17miles - walking through the night in the memory of friends, family and for a hospice that depends on its community to keep end-of-life care personal, local, and available. From the start line at the St Catherine’s Hospice Midnight Walk, we soak up the atmosphere and meet the walkers who are out there for mums, dads, neighbours, and friends they still carry with them.

We also sit down for an in depth conversation with Giles Tomsett, St Catherine’s Hospice CEO to get honest about what hospice care really is. Many people picture a building, but a huge amount of hospice support happens in people’s homes, working alongside GPs, district nurses, and social care to help someone die at home if that’s their wish. We talk about what a “good death” can mean in real life, why those final moments matter so much to families, and the surprising national context, including the fact that 44% of deaths in the UK still happen in a hospital.

Then we get into the reality of hospice funding across Sussex & Surrey: how NHS funding contributes, why charity shops and events like the Midnight Walk are vital, and why regular monthly donations help hospices plan when costs rise. If you’ve ever wondered how to support palliative care in your area, this conversation gives clear, practical options and a powerful reason to act.

If it moves you, please share this with someone local, subscribe so you don’t miss the deeper hospice care conversation we want to host next, and leave us a review. Who would you walk for?

Please click on 'Send a text' above & join our Facebook group to share your perspective and suggestions for future topics - Thank you for your interest! Clive.

Transcript

Welcome To The Midnight Walk

SPEAKER_02 0:00

The statistics and sturdy stokebox in the community. Supporting local charities, social initiatives, and events that make a refreshing difference. So the statistics and sturry stoke box, we're at the

The Atmosphere And The Supporters

SPEAKER_02 0:12

St. Catherine's Hospice Midnight Walk. I love this event. Every year it gets busier, and with me Emma Butler, the brains behind this, apparently.

SPEAKER_04 0:21

Thank you very much. Yes, we're delighted to have so many people here tonight. We've got over 730 walkers taking part, and I'm thrilled to announce that they've raised over 130,000 for hospice campus.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

That's brilliant. Um just describe the atmosphere because it's absolutely packed. So many orange t-shirts, everyone walking for someone and in memory, and each one sponsored.

SPEAKER_04 0:42

Oh, it's incredible. Looking around the hoopness hall, there's orange tutus, everyone's wearing something that lights up, and there's glitter all over every face. It's um my favourite night of the year, and it's just incredible to be here.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Now, what length route are you doing?

SPEAKER_04 0:56

13.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

13. No, no umbrellas, you've got lots of sparkly stuff. Describe yourself for the listeners at home. What do you look like?

SPEAKER_09 1:04

We are resplendent in um rainbow feather headbands and LED light up tutus, and we're from Southwater WI.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

Oh, lovely. Welcome along. And uh, how long do you think 13 miles is going to take you this evening?

SPEAKER_09 1:17

Too long. We think with a bit of faff in and a few stops and a bit of chat, four and a half, five hours.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

Okay, that's your target, four and a half aspir, isn't it? So midnight, after midnight, you'll be back here. Um, and uh who are you raising money for? Are you walking in memory?

SPEAKER_09 1:31

We're walking in the memory of Joan, our lovely neighbour who was looked after at St. Catharines many years ago, who we've never forgotten.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Oh, and St. Catharines are brilliant, aren't they, what they do? Absolutely. So which route are you doing? How far?

SPEAKER_03 1:44

We're doing the 13 miles.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

13 miles. Everyone seems to be doing the 13 miles. I would have done the two mile if it was me, I think.

Local Support Beyond The Walk

SPEAKER_03 1:51

We're a local uh nutrition club and we're just literally here to support everyone.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Tell me more about your nutrition club.

SPEAKER_03 1:57

So we actually help people with weight loss, uh health journey, improving their health and well-being, and sports performance. So it is all about community vibes and making sure everyone feels better within themselves, even if it's a small amount. Drop the website name. Uh www.tilgate nutrition.com. Thank you very much. See you.

Hospice Care Beyond A Building

SPEAKER_02 2:18

So with me now, Giles Thompson, the CEO of St. Catharines Hospice. Uh you must be very proud of your team. They've pulled it off yet again, bigger and better than ever before.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Yes, we're very proud again. It's not about the team so much, is it? It's about all the walkers who want to mobilise themselves, their families and their friends to walk in the memory of someone they love. You know, I've just uh left a person used to work for us who's walking 26 years later, and she's done it every single year in memory of her father. If that was my daughter, I'd be so proud.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

And we've just spoken to a few people walking for their mums, sisters, and every single one of them has said how amazing St. Catherine's Hospice. Each moment is special by you and your team, and I can vouch for that all the times I've spent there as well. Um, so brilliant, and the vibe in there is magnificent. Lots of face paint, lots of sea of orange t-shirts.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Correct, yeah. I mean the point about the hospice care is that what we're trying to do is focus on the individual, the individual's needs. And unlike a hospital which has to work really, really hard on lots and lots of people, we're trying to look after people in an individual way, whatever their age. You know, the youngest cared for us in our new site in Peace Pottage was only 18 years old, and the oldest has been 103. So people will be um saying goodbye to their loved ones of all kinds of ages, and we need to make that as special as possible. Those final moments, meaningful, important, and bonding because they last a love a lifetime.

SPEAKER_02 3:45

Everyone across Sussex and Surrey will know and have heard of St. Catharines Hospice and maybe probably know someone who's been helped by you both in the hospice and at home as well. I know when we last spoke, you were just opening up the Crawley flagship superstore there, the charity store at St. Catharine's Hospice, and you were mentioning the funding with NHS. Any progress on that side of things?

SPEAKER_01 4:07

So our funding is a combination of um NHS funding, which makes a contribution to our overall costs, and the rest of it we raise ourselves. We raise some of that, obviously, through all our charity shops, with our largest one being this new superstore in Crawley opened only a few months ago. That's going very, very well, but I will say to you, all our shops are doing really, really well for us across the whole area. So whether you live in Burgess Hill, in uh Billingshurst, Crawley, Horsham, uh up where I do in Oxted, Rygate, um, and across to Dorking, we've got a shop in pretty well most of the towns of the referral area we cover. 650,000 people look to us for support at end of life. And we're working in an area very similar to uh the Red Hill Hospital, which is the Sarre and Sussex Hospital Trust. So we're talking to them all the time about how we can support them to move more patients out of there, the hospital if possible. Now, NHS negotiations like that take time, they're not always a function of working just with the local hospital. There's uh the system, the NHS system to consider. But I can assure your listeners we are talking to them. We want to support the NHS far more effectively in the future. We already do it really effectively, but we want to do it more effectively in the future by working perhaps in different ways, more integrated in the way we work. And those again, those discussions are going on too. It's really important for your listeners to understand that over 80% of our work is in people's homes. And so uh we want to enable people to die at home if possible, surrounded by their loved ones and all the things that are important to them.

SPEAKER_02 5:37

And that's not widely known. That was a surprise when I came along and heard about that. All the in-home care that you do is really, really important and critical for giving that that choice.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Absolutely. Uh obviously, lots of people imagine hospice is a building, and we have a brand new building, as you know, in Peace Pottage. £20 million uh put there thanks to supporters, every single penny of which comes from donations, not from the government. So that's the inpatient side where we handle more complex support and people perhaps who have socioeconomic needs that mean that they can't be well cared for in their homes. Everybody else, though, wants to support in their homes as far as possible. It's not always possible, obviously. So we work really, really hard and well alongside your GP, district nursing services, uh social care, supporting them and working ourselves to try and make sure a person can have a good death at home. Now, the interesting statistic I love to quote is that across the United Kingdom at the moment, 44% of all deaths are happening in a British hospital. I'm gonna say that I'm gonna say that again for your listeners. 44% of all deaths are happening in a UK hospital. Now, is that where you want to die? Is that where your listeners want to die? I don't think so.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

And I think And this is the big part hospices play, and there's been a squeeze, right? You've made some tough choices over the years to you know live within your means. And an event like this, 700 people in there or more, I think there's over 700, supporting you, raising well over £100,000. This is going to be a good event and help.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Absolutely. Essentially, uh hospice costs nearly £13 million a year to run. So think about that. A good good uh three, four million of that's coming from the NHS, um, and so we can't thank them enough for that. But the rest of it we're raising thanks to the good people tonight who will walk through Horsham all the way through to four o'clock in the morning, trying their best to look walk for a loved one, but also in memory of loved one, but also to raise money for a cause, a local cause. Local jobs, local support, local people, local care. And all of that, not a single pound of profit is ever generated out of what we do. It all goes back into local care. And I hope your listeners will understand that we want to be there for more people in the future. Now, yeah, we've had to make uh certain cuts to our services two years ago, and we deeply regret that, particularly as the society around us is aging.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

The demand is going up, but you've got to live within the means and try to drive that funding.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

So the thing we need to do is ask the government, with inflation being so high lately, you know, hey, have you got a solution for supporting hospices in the future? Right across the country. Do you know it what I find troubling is there's no calculation the NHS has, like they do for a school, the certain amount of pounds per pet per pupil, they have no patient no patient formula for the support of hospices up and down the UK. And that can't be right, can it? Just as a society is aging. I'm born in 1965, which means that if anybody uh is in the generation ahead of me, which is between 1945 and 1965, it means that we've arrived at our average length of life because somebody born in 1945 is now 81. In the United Kingdom, that is the average length of all our lives. Yeah. So if the NHS is under tr stress and trouble now, it's about to be seriously stressed and troubled by my generation coming along. And we could do better than we are doing now. Absolutely joined up thinking.

SPEAKER_02 9:02

I mean, we are the UK, right? We have to do better than that, and I think it would be great to get you on an episode of the Sussex and Surrey soapbox and do a deep dive on hospice, end-of-life care, and what that looks like. That would be great to get a panel and really go into depth because we've talked about it in our interviews before, but I think it'd be good to really do something special on that and get wider conversation from councillors in that conversation too.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Essentially, we have to understand that um the NHS is is a brilliant, brilliant organization under great stress because of demand. So, how does it meet that demand? And some of the way, surely, to meet that demand is work successfully with partner organisations that can help it in their areas of specialty. And our area of specialty is ensuring people as far as possible can have a good death. And we are passionately committed to that. And I I sit sit sit with you today with 700 people about to sit along and walk alongside me. Despite the weather, despite the weather, slow them off. Absolutely, sowing the same passion, and that passion is coming from um the conviction that they want to walk in memory of someone and they want to do some good, and they want to do some good locally, and they want to do some good locally, and the cause they've chosen is St. Catherine's Hospice. Um, your listeners will understand wherever they're listening in that St. Catherine's Hospice and any hospice in the UK wants to give something back. And that giving something back is local care for people at the most vulnerable time in their lives, and if we can do right by people at the end of life, you know, that is a benefit to the family and their and their loved one's memory forever. My best friend died in Oxford in 2009. It's the reason I work here because he died leaving just an under one-year-old and a four-year-old. And I had an amazing moment of uh full circle.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

That touched you completely.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

I carried his body out of the house with the Undertaker, and because the stairs were so difficult, the Undertaker couldn't do it himself. But the thing that I uh I want to tell your listeners is that all those years later, just a couple of months ago, I was at Sandhurst, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, seeing that young boy pass out and join the British Army. Oh, that one-year-old that is now growing up. Oh, fantastic. That's brilliant. You realise that, you know, we can still honour someone however many years later. And as I say, I've got an ex-member of staff walking in memory of her father who died 26 years ago. Wow, that is so heartwarming and touching, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 11:25

And there's a lot of those people in there walking in memory of someone, but also sponsorship, those that that that support

Why Regular Giving Matters

SPEAKER_02 11:30

you. Anyone listening at home, how they can help? Obviously, go and visit a charity shop, they're all across Sussex and Surrey. We love goods, we love goods, yeah. Good goods, obviously. Furniture also.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Furniture also. We love uh any kind of clothing, we love all that. We also love donations, obviously.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

And uh and check out the website because you can do the monthly donation, which helps the reoccurring monthly donation.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Absolutely. Donations obviously are the lifeblood of I can call it that, of our uh charitable cause. The reason I'm uh giving in a regular way helps us so much is that we can plan. With inflation very high, can you understand costs are rising, and sometimes they're rising at a level that beats the propensity of a donor to meet that rising escalating cost. And I know I'm getting a bit kind of complicated here, but essentially costs can potentially rise higher than donations are rising at, which means we have to rely on our reserves, the money in the bank.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

So if people can give something every month and make that consistent, it means that you can manage your your forecast and your budget more clearly.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

And we can do more. Brilliant. The beautiful thing there is that with that certainty, we can do more, we can offer more services potentially. We can we can go to the NHS with greater choice and opportunity for for innovation. And innovation is what the Brits do best in care. The NHS is an innovation created in Britain, and we want it to succeed.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

And everyone in your team creates special moments every day. I've been there a number of times, they do amazing work. So a big, a big thank you from everyone for what you do at St. Catherine's Hospice. Uh, and I know you personally are very passionate about this, and you're going to be here to the small hours welcoming that last walker back.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

So uh thank you very much. Thank you so much. I will be here to the last walker. They are doing such a magnificent thing for us. It's very kind of you to thank me, but remember there are 225 people who work for me uh in the support of our mission, our cause, our raison d'etre, which is the care of people end of life. There's 1,000 people volunteering across our shops.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

And we've just had the volunteers week, and that was a lovely clip you did for them.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Absolutely. There's 1,000, over 1,000 people volunteering in our shops, they're volunteering to provide counselling support, they're volunteering in our kitchens, in our gardens, they're providing admin support, and many, many of them are here tonight helping to marshal the biggest event in the St. Catharines year. So, you know, my part is only very, very small. My part is to mobilize them to do their best, to do their best by local people, because that's what we all want. We all want to do the best for each other and for local people, because if we can get that right, local people will respond as they always have done for all hospices up in another country. But I would ask people to understand that every hospice needs their help today, tomorrow, and all and forwards, because income is a is a challenge for us all because all of us are under pressure with the cost of living. But uh I can't thank your listeners enough for the generosity that they show us year on, year out, year on, year out, day in and night out. Remember, this is a 24-hour thing the care of people in hospice and out in the community, and so it's work that always is going on around us.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

Giles Thompson, thank you so much. Always lovely speaking to you. I know the starting line is going to be ready in just a moment. We're gonna speak to a few others and then we'll set them off.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Fabulous. Well, as I say, um we'll be walking into the wee small hours of probably about around about four o'clock. And I want to say again thank you to all the walkers, thank you to all the people sponsoring those walkers, and to anybody listening, uh please have a think about uh what you can do to support your local hospice. And if your local hospice is St. Catharine's Hospice, then thank you for all the support down 46 years that we've been operating, and we'd love to continue that support, that relationship to keep local people having the very best care, outstanding care, world-class care, still into the future.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

Charles, thank you very much. Thank you. Bye bye now. Bye-bye.

Walkers’ Stories Of Love And Loss

SPEAKER_02 15:13

So Paula McGoverny and Wayne Stepney are with me now, both uh here for St. Catherine's Hospice, uh been doing this quite a few years, huh?

SPEAKER_08 15:21

We have, yes, yeah. It's been going a long time and it's um it's an amazing event for us. It really is fantastic to see everyone here.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

Over 700 people raising well over £100,000. Of course, Wayne, the hospice really needs this funding, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Absolutely does. It's vital we get that funding from our supporters to ensure we're giving that end-of-life there for people from Surrey and Sussex. It's massive important. And events like tonight, our community coming together for us is just amazing.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

And just paint a picture for us. People are walking in there, it's a sea of orange. I've can't wait for the starting line when they all set up.

SPEAKER_08 15:53

Yeah, no, it's it's really beautiful to watch, actually. There's everyone in their orange t-shirts, there's people with sparkly tutus on um and sparkly headgear, and there's glitz of paint, and there's everything. Um and it's really brilliant to see it all going round Horsham, which is one of our real heartland towns in the community.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

Here we go, we've got uh three volunteers here doing the 13 miles. Are you looking forward to this?

SPEAKER_07 16:16

Looking forward to it, but a little bit nervous.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

What is that?

SPEAKER_07 16:19

Never done anything like this before, but it was such a good cause that we just had to sign up and say yes.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

And your sister got through cancer, and that's what led you to do this.

SPEAKER_07 16:27

Yeah, she's a cancer survivor, but um I know that other people aren't quite so fortunate, and I just wanted to help raise money for a very valuable cause.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

And it's an excellent cause. The hospice do brilliant work in the community and they really need funds. And both of you, are you excited? 13 malls?

SPEAKER_05 16:43

Yeah, looking forward to it. Yeah, got lots of snacks packed, and glad it's not raining. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

Where's your umbrella?

SPEAKER_05 16:49

Don't need an umbrella, we've got some.

SPEAKER_02 16:50

That'd be fine, that'd be fine, that'd be fine. And and the reason you're walking?

SPEAKER_05 16:54

Walking for my mum who passed away nearly 10 years ago. She was looked after by the hospice. Um, we're really grateful for the support that they gave our family, so just here to thank them and raise some money.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

And they are incredible the work they do there. I mean, I've been there a number of times, and all of the volunteers, all of the staff make every single moment very special, don't they?

SPEAKER_05 17:15

Very much, yeah. From special breakfasts, um, and I can remember sharing a gin and sonic with my mum with a drinks trolley would come round in the evening. It was just special times, you know, to remember those very few difficult months that we had at the end, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

And they sort of across Sussex and the wider area, and also at home care as well. And and your reason?

SPEAKER_06 17:35

Um I've been walking from my lovely mum Rosary, and she died about two and a half years ago, and St. Catherine's really helped us. They um helped when she first got poorly organising like her wheelchair and her benefits and things like that, and then also towards the end, making sure that she wasn't frightened about like her that she would be comforted and looked after in a nice place, so really lovely and kind.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

And it's a lovely energy here, it's very vibrant. I love the face paint you've got on the middle shirts as well. Have a brilliant time, the music's great, and the stumping line's just about something.

SPEAKER_07 18:06

Not too long to go, so thank you very much.

Final Thanks And Listener Feedback

SPEAKER_02 18:25

Tell us what you think. Leave a comment below or click on send a tag. Thank you for listening to the exercise so bug.