St Christophers
Malcolm Payne

Social care and social work are important in end-of-life care.

Malcolm Payne's blog focuses on developments in social care and social work that affect palliative and end-of-life care. It is part of the information work of St Christopher's Hospice, London.

Misys Charitable Foundation

Government palliative and end of life care websites

August 27th, 2008 by Malcolm Payne


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.

One Response to “Government palliative and end of life care websites”

  1. angelamcfarlane Says:

    Pleased to see this-have just spent an hour looking up palliatuve care strategies esp around breakthrough cancer pain in wales and found nothing-this re-assures me there isnt much going on in wales in this area, unlike Scotland/england at moment
    Thanks

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