Abstract

Following the Social Care Champions Workshop held at Loros Hospice in 2014 the hospice’s social work team devised an action plan to identify specific goals from the Framework for Social Care at End of Life, focusing on improving collaborative working with colleagues in adult social care services.

A meeting was arranged in 2016 with a local partnership NHS trust. The aim of the meeting was to explore and identify a realistic plan to forge stronger links between them and the hospice. A proposal was put forward to facilitate a three-day teaching programme to be delivered by lecturing staff within the education department at the hospice for social care colleagues who showed an interest in palliative care.

Course aims were for the participants to have a greater understanding of palliative and end-of-life care, including holistic assessment and communication skills for end-of-life and for them to be able to relate these to their own areas of professional practice.

The pilot teaching programme was delivered to a cohort of 16 social care staff. The feedback from the course participants was extremely positive and further cohort of the same training has already been commissioned by the local NHS trust.

Further collaboration has followed on from this project and an event has been organised to promote the resource ‘The Role of the Social Worker in Palliative, End of Life and Bereavement Care’. This has involved the palliative care social workers from four regional hospices engaging with a Social Work Teaching Pilot and the staff from its partnership agencies. The aims of the event are to look at how people can get the most out of social work and how stronger links can be developed to support the delivery of high quality end of life care.