Background Compassionate Communities is a public health approach to palliative care where death, dying and loss is everybody’s business (Kellehear. QJM. 2013; 106(12):1071–5). A new team at St Catherine’s Hospice (Preston) identified the community’s needs to improve its death literacy (Graham-Wisener, Toner, Leonard, et al. BMC Palliat Care. 2022;21(1):145) and was gifted awareness sessions and support from established hospice teams in Ipswich and Plymouth.

Aim To optimise the impact and reach of compassionate communities education by sharing and collaborating across hospices.

Method St Luke’s Hospice (Plymouth) created Compassionate Friends sessions in 2018, which underpins the Compassionate Champions and Buddies schemes and supports the Compassionate City Charter. Gifted to the new team at St Elizabeth’s Hospice (Ipswich), they developed Compassionate Conversations; online and in-person monthly awareness sessions co-delivered with volunteers. St Catherine’s Hospice adapted Compassionate Conversations as part of their initial strategy; delivered to community groups, non-profits and volunteers. Sessions are evaluated and qualitative and quantitative data collected.

Results St Luke’s Hospice have trained over 850 people. Impact includes securing Charter status and the expansion of the Compassionate Buddies scheme into schools. Since 2021, St Elizabeth Hospice have trained over 1,150 people, supporting a multi-hospice/partner bid for ICB and National Lottery funding to increase activities across Suffolk. Sessions are freely gifted to local partners, with many ripple effects. From 2023, St Catherine’s Hospice have trained over 180 people. Sessions have supported four new community bereavement cafés and one independent bereavement support group. We estimate our combined efforts have trained almost 2,200 people.

Conclusion With limited resources for developing new education programmes in hospices, partnership and collaboration creates a culture of peer-support and maximises the impact of tried-and-tested effective Compassionate Communities awareness sessions across the UK. As more hospices adopt a Compassionate Communities approach, new teams can be gifted this ready-to-use training, which ultimately increases the confidence and resilience in communities around death, dying and loss.