The first Czech perinatal hospice: Joint venture or competitive field?

Abstract

There is no legally established perinatal hospice in the Czech Republic. Several initiatives work towards launching an institution to support parents in the event of a fatal prenatal diagnosis or life-limiting condition in their unborn baby. Parents use the label perinatal hospice as they subvert and transform the narrow legal and strictly medical framework for such institutions. Hospice care became a legitimate sector of care provision only recently. This study analyses four initiatives that strive to establish and formalise perinatal hospices in the Czech Republic, with a focus on the strategies these initiatives engage in to achieve change. A sociological qualitative empirical study (2017-2019) informs the findings. Initiatives vary in approach from cooperation to competition in being recognised as 'the first perinatal hospice'. The study shows how such rhetoric is adopted to attract the funding required for sustainability. Community cooperation and involvement can, then, form a contra position.