Thames Hospicecare - Our Standards

Thames Hospicecare, as an Organisation, embraces a Governance framework as a means of promoting, developing and showing evidence of the high quality care it provides to the local community.

Our philosophy is that:

‘Together we care for adults with life limiting illness and their families, friends and carers, giving them hope and dignity throughout their illness.

In so doing we will maintain and respect the dignity of every individual, we will operate with integrity, we will at all times strive for excellence in all that we do, we will ensure that care is provided irrespective of ability, status, origin, race, sexual orientation, age or belief.’

(THc Philosophy, 2005)

Our aims are:

an integrated unified organisation with clear objectives which all staff support and understand

to develop and implement a system which provides for effective internal communications and effective management of external stakeholders.

to develop and embed a new culture and identity, building on existing strengths, for Thames Hospicecare.

(THc Business Plan, 2005/2006)

Our Governance Policy identifies how Thames Hospicecare aims to monitor its practice to meet the goals set by the Governance framework. It also embraces a controls assurance strategy which ‘is a process designed to provide evidence that we are doing our ‘reasonable best’ to manage ourselves so as to meet our objectives and protect our staff, our service users and other stakeholders against risk of all kind’

(National Clinical Assessment Authority, Risk Management Strategy 12/11/2003)

Governance is overseen at the Hospice by the Governance Committee, a Committee of the Trustee Board, whose meetings are also attended by members of the Senior Management Team. The Committee meets quarterly and reports to the Board of Trustees.

The Organisation is regulated by the Care Standards Act 2000 and inspected on an annual basis by the Healthcare Commission. The inspection of both Hospice sites is based on the National Minimum Standards, self-assessment and the identification of risk. Both sites have been inspected several times in the past under their former names and this year as Thames Hospicecare (Windsor & Ascot). The Healthcare Commission publishes these reports on their website. If you would like to view them, please click here.