Marie Curie is a large, national charity that provides care and support to people living with a terminal illness. The charity runs a network of home care nurses, operates nine hospices and funds research into improved palliative care. It has an income of around £156m, over 4,400 employees and 11,400 volunteers. Marie Curie’s head office is in Central London.

Marie Curie changed its name from Marie Curie Cancer Care in 2014 to emphasise that it provides support to people with any terminal illness, not just cancer. Other common illnesses Marie Curie provides palliative care for include motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s, dementia, heart failure and chronic pulmonary disease, as well as different forms of cancer.

Marie Curie was founded in 1948 as the Marie Cure International Memorial and shortly became known as the Marie Curie Memorial Foundation. In 1958, Marie Cure began operating its own day and night nursing service and, by the late 1990s, the charity was reaching around 40% of the people in the UK who died of cancer at home. In 1995, the charity took a new name: ‘Marie Curie Cancer Care’, and became simply ‘Marie Curie’ in 2014.

Home nursing remains Marie Curie’s core service. It provides nursing care in partnership with the NHS and covers 94% of the UK’s population. There are nearly 20,000 Marie Curie Nurses, caring for people with a terminal illness in their homes. In 2014, Marie Curie nurses provided over 1.3 million hours of nursing to more than 31,000 people, in addition to supporting their families.

Marie Curie also operates nine hospices across the UK and Northern Ireland. They are located in Belfast, Bradford, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hampstead in London, Liverpool, Newcastle and Solihull. The hospices offer nursing and medical care as well as social, emotional and spiritual support. They have a range of services for people who merely visit, such as counselling and complementary therapies.

Marie Curie began funding medical research in 1952 and is now one of the UK’s leading funders of research into improving care for terminally ill people. It awards around £1m a year to palliative care research projects and new research teams have been set up at UCL, Liverpool University and Cardiff University.

Marie Curie is a major fundraising charity and was a pioneer of direct mail fundraising. Its Great Daffodil Appeal has been raising funds since 1986 and takes place every March. 2014 saw the most successful appeal to date, with £8.26 million raised.

Marie Curie’s employees include nurses, complementary therapists, fundraisers and shop workers.