Hospices in South Africa are usually registered as not-for profit organisations. A small amount of money is available from government but in the main, the hospice has to source its own funds. Barbara Campbell-Ker:

The spirit can be extremely willing but we are as good as the resources that we have, and we have to find all our money. The department of health gives us about 2 per cent or 3 per cent of what we require - if we’re lucky - and that isn’t done just by handing it out, but after completing funding proposals.²⁷

This places a considerable burden on hospice organisations which occasionally causes difficulties. Lesley van Zyl, general manager of Highway Hospice ( Durban), tells how dwindling funds can impact an organisation:

The challenge for me is always to balance the books. We’ve gone through some fairly tough periods where we had to retrench staff [make staff redundant] and we moved from being predominantly in-care units - correctly I believe - to care for patients in the community by opening various day centres. So we’ve opened day centres in Chesterville, in Umlazi, in Phoenix and in Inanda, and difficult as it was and as painful as it was, I personally believe it was the right thing to do.

We had two years where we were battling to raise funds and we had to down-size. So, you know, we make a loss year - it’s not good; but if you make it in two years, it’s worse. By the time we get to the third year you really have to do something. So we reduced our beds from 16 to 8. It was a particularly difficult thing to do; and also I think whenever you are facing the staff and you have to tell them that some of them are going to be without work, that’s really tough.²⁸