UK governments
England:
Department of Health provides fairly comprehensive websites: end of life strategy website. http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Healthcare/IntegratedCare/Endoflifecare/index.htm
NHS end of life care website: http://www.endoflifecareforadults.nhs.uk/eolc/
Northern Ireland
No end of life or palliative care website at the Northern Ireland Office website, but a search for palliative care on the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety will lead to some documents:
http://www.dhsspsni.gov.uk/index.htm
Scotland
As with NI, there appears to be no website on palliative and/or end-of-life care on the Scottish government website; searching for these topics (aside from the usual results on things like end of life vehicles) produces a fairly large number of documents on social care issues generally; this seems to suggest that the Scots see palliative care as much more of a social care issue than the London-based Department of Health, which is highly medical in its orientation. There is a national standard for hospice care (2005):
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/46910/0025661.pdf
to which there are 2007 revisions:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Health/care/17652/RevHospice#top
The Scottish government website on health and community care is:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Health
Don’t stay there too long or you get a really irritating video download about 60 years of the NHS.
Wales
Again no specific website; NHS Wales website, connects to the Wales government and National Assembly; a search for ‘palliative care’ offers a range of documents ‘end of life care’ only one:
http://new.wales.gov.uk/topics/health/nhswales/?lang=en (also available in Welsh).
Commentary: All this suggests that, compared with the well-resourced England DH site, there is no coordinated information about end-of-life and palliative care on government website, although interesting documents may be found; see my selected documents post.

England
The main Department of Health website; fairly comprehensive coverage and good links. British government structure divides social care/social work with adults and children, although since end-of-life and palliative care is regarded as health this is the one that matters to readers of this blog, but the DCSF (Department for Children, Schools and Families – I suspect this name is not long for this world) social work site is given for completeness:
Department of Health: http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/SocialCare/index.htm
Department for Children etc: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/localauthorities/index.cfm?action=subsubject&subsubjectID=54&subjectID=13
This is the nearest equivalent but, because DCSF organises its sites by children’s interests rather than professional concerns, it is actually part of the safeguarding children websites. If you are interested in this, you might also want to look at integrated working and early years sites for social care content.
Northern Ireland
The Northern Irish Department has an Office of Social Services (OSS – people with long televisual memories will remember the American series about the second world war OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA):
http://www.dhsspsni.gov.uk/index/ssi.htm
Scotland
The Scottish government website on social care covers mainly their Changing Lives policy:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/People/Social-Work-Services/intro
The Changing Lives priority is pursued in the much broader website for the Changing Lives team:
http://www.socialworkscotland.org.uk/
Wales:
Welsh government social care website:
http://new.wales.gov.uk/topics/health/socialcare/?lang=en (also available in Welsh.)

If you want to find out more about social work, you might find main links to UK social work sites useful; as follows:
Professional organisations
British Association of Social Workers: http://www.basw.co.uk/
I presume there must be some rationale to this site, but I find it really difficult to cope with. The problem is that it produces ‘stories’ in a journalistic way and then does not index them in any way that I can understand.
Social Care Association: http://www.socialcareassociation.co.uk/
The Social Care Association was originally a residential care professional association, now broadly for people working in the group care world.
Association of Directors of Adult Social Services: http://www.adass.org.uk/index.shtml
Association of Directors of Children’s Services: http://www.adcs.org.uk/
Association of Directors of Social Work (Scotland): http://www.adsw.org.uk/
Research/information organisations
Social Care Institute for Excellence: http://www.scie.org.uk/ (the social care equivalent of NICE; has lots of useful information on its site).
Social Work and Policy Subject Centre of the Higher Education Academy: http://www.swap.ac.uk/ (An ace site for social work academics with all sorts of informationrelevant to social work in the UK and internationally; for people from healthcare its title indicates the reality that social work is very strongly connected academically not with healthcare studies but with social policy as an academic subject).
IRISS, the Scottish equivalent of SCIE: http://www.iriss.ac.uk/about.
Professional registration bodies
The UK care councils
General Social Care Council (England): http://www.gscc.org.uk/Home/
Northern Ireland Social Care Council: http://www.niscc.info/
Scottish Social Services Council: http://www.sssc.uk.com/Homepage.htm
Care Council for Wales: http://www.ccwales.org.uk/
Education and Training bodies
National Organisation for Practice Teaching: http://www.nopt.org/ (an organisation for practice teachers and assessors in social work education)
Skills for Care: http://www.topssengland.net/ (the English social care employer-led training body)
The Children’s Worforce Development Council: http://www.cwdcouncil.org.uk/ (for social care people working with children)
QAA benchmark: http://www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/benchmark/statements/drafts/SocialWork07.pdf The Higher Education Quality Assurance Agency publishes the benchmark against which social work coruses and their curricula are evaluated in the higher education sector.

Another study on poverty collects up a range of previous studies and shows that cancer patients and their families struggle with the benefits system, and have few sources of advice. Again, part of the picture is that health and social care professionals do not see it as their role to help people with this, but people’s financial stability is basic to a satisfying life and being able to benefit from healthcare.

Wilson, K. and Amir, Z. (2008) Cancer and disability benefits: a synthesis of qualitative findings on advice and support. Psycho-Oncology. 17: 421-9.

Pics of the rebuilding at St Christopher’s, now under way, in solidarity with all colleagues working through a difficult time, to make things better in the future:

Dig this?

An interesting paper in Palliative Medicine, reanalysing the British Household Survey to find that while 90% of people in the last year of life saw a primary care professional and a third spent time in hospital, more a third reported financial strain in their lives. The proportion receiving attendance allowance (payable to people over 65) was low compared with wider studies. The suggestion is that primary care professionals could have pointed more people at benefits they were entitled to. I see this as an example of the failure of healthcare services to integrate their social care responsibilities properly into their roles. Social benefits and social care are not just someone else’s responsibility.

Hanratty, B., Jacoby, A. and Whitehead, M. (2008) Socioeconomic differences in service use, payment and receipt of illness-related benefits in the last year of life: findings from the British Household Panel Survey. Palliative Medicine. 22: 248-55.

Pics of the rebuilding at St Christopher’s, now under way, in solidarity with all colleagues working through a difficult time, to make things better in the future:
The Chapel is moving (God moves in mysterious…)

Malcolm Payne is Policy and Development Advisor with St Christopher’s Hospice, one of the world’s leading hospices, responsible for policy work, projects and management and social work practice issues. He was previously Director of Psycho-social and Spiritual Care at the Hospice, responsible for social work, welfare and bereavement services, the creative living centre, spiritual care, psychiatry and volunteers working with patients and carers. He is also Honorary Professor at Kingston University/St George’s University of London, the joint faculty of health and social care sciences, Visiting Professor, Opole University, Poland, Emeritus Professor at Manchester Metropolitan Univerity and Docent in social work with the Department of Social Policy, Helsinki Univerity, Finland.

After a career in probation and social services, he worked in academic posts and voluntary sector management and practice in local and national organisations.

Among more than 250 publications are his widely known books: Modern Social Work Theory (3rd ed., Palgrave Macmillan/Lyceum, 2005), What is Professional Social Work? (2nd ed., Policy Press/Lyceum, 2006), Social Cae Practice in Context (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), Globalisation and International Social Work (with Gurid Aga Askeland, Ashgate, 2008) and as editor, with Nigel Hartley Creative Arts in Palliative Care (Jessica Kingsley, 2008).

This blog is written by Malcolm Payne as part of the information work of St Christopher’s Hospice.

St Christopher’s, a constant innovator in end-of-life care, is one of the UK’s largest hospices, a leading palliative care charity and a founding source of the worldwide hospice movement.

Website: http://www.stchristophers.org.uk/

St Christopher’s has one of the largest and most comprehensive programmes of palliative care education for professionals and others: you can see the programme and book courses here.

St Christopher’s is also a partner with Help the Hospices in Hospice Information, one of the most comprehensive information services on palliative care in the world: http://www.hospiceinformation.info/