Day two of our conference begins bright and early with a breakfast seminar with the Newlife Foundation for Disabled Children. Newlife supports thousands of families by campaigning for policy change and funding targeted medical research to improve child health.
This will be followed by the keynote speech from Tracey Bleakley, chief executive of Hospice UK. Tracey has had a prolific career spearheading national campaigns, including the campaign for financial education to be included in the national curriculum which she championed during her time as CEO of the Personal Finance Education Group (pfeg).
Next is the chance for another break to seek refreshments and explore the exhibition. If you missed it yesterday, make sure you stop by the Poetry Prescriptions stand. Here you can meet one of our resident conference poets, Dr Phil Isherwood or Sue Spencer, to find out more about how to prescribe and use poetry in your every day practice. This is a great opportunity to connect with new ideas and share experiences in an innovative way.
You will also be able to view the haikus which have been submitted around our conference theme of ‘People, Partnerships and Potential’. There’s still time to have your own submission included. Have a look at our website for more information.
After exercising your creative muscles, you can attend one of our parallel sessions. You could join a discussion on what is next for palliative care funding in England, learn about new opportunities in volunteering and developments in new models of care, or debate how to extend palliative care to people we aren’t currently reaching.
During lunch, you will have the opportunity to attend a lunchtime session with Professor Bill Noble, editor-in-chief of BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care, the official journal of Hospice UK. The session, on writing for publication, could help you effectively share your practice with a larger audience.
After lunch, it’s back to the main auditorium for our fourth plenary; a panel discussion centred around the question ‘Should hospices be more like businesses?’ We will hear from David Picton, chief sustainability officer at Carillion, and Eamonn O’Neal DL, chief executive of St Ann’s Hospice.
This will be followed by more parallel sessions. You could discover how digital innovations are transforming palliative care, discuss what motivates in-memory giving, or learn about how different advocacy approaches are used to influence people effectively.
Your day at conference will finish with something very different – a play. Learning how to die is a one-woman show by Luca Rutherford which asks what scares us about dying, and how we can use that fear to drive our living actions. Luca hopes that searching for new ways to talk about death might change the way we live: “Here is someone who wants all of life to feel like a funeral, but ‘without the pain and suffering’, only that sense that the people around us and the things we do are so, so important.” (Exeunt)
After such a busy day, you will be pleased to hear that it’s time to relax. Our conference dinner is being held at Circo, a circus-themed bar and restaurant with panoramic views of Liverpool’s historic Albert Dock. After a welcome drink, you will be served a three course meal with wine, and you can then sit back and enjoy the novel setting. Tickets can still be bought from our website.
Now read what to expect from day three – and day one if you missed it!
The conference People, Partnerships and Potential is being held in Liverpool from 16 to 18 November 2016. Information about the conference, including how to register to attend, can be found on Hospice UK’s website.
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