A pilot programme to provide culturally appropriate end of life care at home is currently underway in East London, thanks to a unique partnership between Majlish Homecare Services and St Joseph’s Hospice.
The seeds of this partnership were set during a meeting at the Second International Public Health and Palliative Care Conference held in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2011. During the discussions there, it became clear that the ethos and aims of the two charities were very similar and that their care services covered similar geographical areas in the UK. So the idea grew of joining together to provide culturally appropriate end of life care to enable people in East London to live out their final days at home, if that was their wish, while receiving excellent and holistic care. The next step was to devise a plan to help bring the initial idea into reality.
Following a number of discussions and meetings, and after due deliberation, the boards of St Joseph’s Hospice and MHS both endorsed the initiative and so enabled it to move ahead.
It was felt important to acknowledge the role that homecare staff have in providing end of life care. So, to extend and enhance the skills and knowledge of MHS staff, a training course was devised, initially for 10 MHS staff, facilitated by the hospice.
To help to inform the content of the course, a focus group meeting was held with the homecare staff and educators from the hospice to assess the current experience of the staff. It was also felt necessary to include sessions on working with specialist palliative care personnel at the hospice.
A 16-week training programme was designed by the hospice, with different elements to be led by different services so that the MHS staff would start to understand the range and scope of the care services provided by the hospice. The training programme was also an opportunity for hospice staff to learn more about the services that MHS provided.
The 2008 End of Life Care Strategy underpinned the programme and the pathway was used as a framework for each topic area of the modules. The modules covered:
- communications skills
- advanced care planning
- initiating difficult conversations
- caring for people towards and at end of life
- working in multi-agency groups
- how care is coordinated across the community.
Other aspects included loss, grief and bereavement, and how to care for each other while caring for someone who is dying.
The pilot training programme was successfully carried out during 2012 and a special ceremony to present certificates to the attendees was held at St Joseph’s Hospice towards the end of that year to recognise and celebrate the achievements of the homecare and hospice staff involved.
At the same time as the training programme, a steering group was established, involving personnel from MHS and St Joseph’s, to plan for the pilot project stage for the new initiative. The pilot was launched in January 2013 in one London borough. The steering group will continue to meet regularly to assess and monitor the pilot. It is anticipated that it will run for a number of months, to enable a proper assessment of its impact and how the partnership between the two charities is working.
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