The downloads from this post are my comments on palliative care, and to a lesser extent, policies on social care and older people relevant to palliative care from the party political websites of the main parties in the UK.
I have looked at the three main national parties, Conservatives, Labour and Libdems, and parties in power or major contention in the countries of the UK (the DUP and Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland, Plaid Cymru in Wales and the ScotNats in Scotland. Eventually, I might get around to lesser parties.
My overall assessment is that, on palliative care, the Conservatives win out; their coverage is much more extensive, I think because they have a relatively open website with lots of information about people (including their palliative care affiliations) and speeches from their members, all easily searchable. My view of this is that I wish the political parties were all open and non-monlithic like this, because it allows people with a minority interest like palliative care to find points about it. The Libdems have less but are OK. Labour has an execrable website, hard to read, no search facility and a focus on their priorities rather than any specialist groups that might want to see what their interests are.
The smaller parties all have some content on the issues relevant to this blog. What this shows is the low profile of palliative care generally; there is rarely a specific policy, and where there is this is often about the voluntary sector providing more palliative care for the relevant government; i.e. cheaply.
The other comment that I would make is how motherhood and apple crumble it is (my mother preferred crumble, it’s easier than pie). I do think it’s about time that palliative care moved beyond the sentimental approach to promoting its cause.
See what you think and let me know.
Conservative Party, Democratic Unionist Party, Labour Party, Labour Party, Plaid Cymru, Scottish Nationalist Party, Sinn Fein
