Celebrating 50 years of Dorothy House

This year, Dorothy House proudly celebrates its 50th birthday — a milestone marking half a century of compassionate care, innovation, and community partnership.

This anniversary year is an opportunity to honour where we’ve come from, reflect on who we are today, and look ahead to the future of end of life care.

Our past: a vision that transformed end of life care

Dorothy House was founded in 1976 by Prue Dufour, whose month-long secondment with Dame Cicely Saunders at St Christopher’s Hospice ignited a passion to bring pioneering palliative care to the West Country. Inspired by Saunders’ belief that there is always “so much more to be done” for people nearing the end of life, Prue became the UK’s first specialist domiciliary nurse, offering compassionate care directly to people in their homes.

From those humble beginnings — just Prue and a vision — Dorothy House quickly grew. By 1979, her own home in Bath became our first six‑bed inpatient unit.

Our present: care reaching deep into our communities

Today, Dorothy House continues to live out our founding principles, though our remit has evolved from supporting people in their final weeks to walking alongside them through their last 1,000 days — offering support from the moment of a life‑limiting diagnosis.

Our services are holistic and person‑centred, ranging from clinical care and symptom management to bereavement support, therapy, wellbeing activities, education, and pioneering research.

As a charity, four in every five pounds we need comes from our community. Fundraising events, gifts in wills, local champions, and our 30 shops ensure that high‑quality end of life care remains available for all who need it.

We are now into the second year of our three-year strategy: “It’s personal.”  Our approach focuses on empowering our communities, listening to individual needs and ensuring services are available where and when they are most needed. By collaborating with health and social care partners and other charities, we aim to live in a society where no one faces death alone.

We have directly cared for more than 75,000 people over the past half decade, each with their own unique story. These stories, woven together, form the rich tapestry of our shared history.  To celebrate this history we launched Life Lines in 2025—a campaign collecting stories from patients, families, staff, and volunteers. These accounts highlight the role Dorothy House has played in people’s lives and offer a glimpse into the impact of 50 years of care.

Our future: our vision for the next 50 years of Dorothy House

The next fifty years will bring new challenges. The UK’s ageing population will grow significantly, increasing demand for end of life care. Meeting this need requires innovation, collaboration, and a shift toward more localised, personalised, and holistic care.

Dorothy House envisions a future where communities feel empowered to support one another; where end of life is embraced as a natural, meaningful part of the human journey. We are focusing on connection with nature and art, working alongside partners such as Grow for Life to offer horticultural therapy, IceBreakers offering a space for men to connect in nature, and Roseberry Road Studios to provide therapeutic life drawing. We believe that in the modern, digital world, these moments of simple connection have increasing significance for those facing death and bereavement.

As we celebrate our 50th year, we recommit to our founding belief: to help everyone live fully until they die — adding life to days, not days to life.