Beckton hospice gets national accreditation

Richard House Children’s Hospice has been awarded prestigious national healthcare accreditation for its services.

The Beckton-based hospice has received the ‘CHKS Standard for Hospice Services’ accreditation and is one of only two in the UK to achieve the status.

CHKS is a quality assurance tool for independent organisations, which sets out a framework of standards which need to be in place to ensure the capacity to provide high quality service and to ensure that this is consistently reproducible.

Richard House was assessed on patient safety, patient experience, clinical governance, leadership and staff experience.

The accreditation, which is widely used by healthcare organisations across Europe, is valid for three years with ongoing monitoring.

Peter Ellis, hospice chief executive, said: “For voluntary sector organisations such as children’s hospices, the challenge is meeting national quality standards on a limited budget.

“Richard House has an ongoing commitment to effective governance and clear leadership which are essential to ensuring continued high quality care services for families and the wider community and retaining the confidence of donors, funders, volunteers and staff.

“It is a great tribute to our staff and recognises their contribution towards high quality care. We all feel extremely proud.”