Working together to improve palliative and end of life care

Across the country, hospices are playing a vital role in supporting the NHS through the COVID-19 pandemic. In incredibly challenging circumstances, they provide care to around a quarter of a million people every year at the end of their lives as well as support families through the toughest of times. 

For Luen Thompson, Chief Executive of Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice in West Yorkshire, a priority was to work collaboratively with hospices across the region to respond to the immediate pressures of Covid-19.

“Establishing regular weekly calls helped us to share insight and resources through the crisis,” explains Luen. “We also set up very practical measures such as a network for distribution of PPE equipment and, with other charity colleagues, setting up a Grief and Loss line offering telephone support and counselling to those who had lost a loved one through Covid-19.”

Building a vision

Realising that there was benefit in deepening this collaboration for the long term, Luen and her West Yorkshire colleagues engaged Lucent to help facilitate a vision and ethos for the network of hospices across the region.

“Lucent helped us to be really clear about what we wanted to achieve,” explains Luen. “We had already built trust in the immediate response to the Covid crisis, so we knew that having spotted an opportunity for development, motivation was high to make the collaboration work.”

Insights and reflection

Lucent undertook in-depth research with each hospice lead, pulling together key insights to inform the delivery of a two-part strategy workshop. This took place over two consecutive days to give space for reflection, without losing momentum. A mix of pair work and breakout rooms was used to keep energies high and to foster even stronger relationships across the network.

“Working virtually meant we had to be really focused and do our homework beforehand,” says Luen. “Together we developed a vision and ethos for our network and created a clear narrative about the benefits of collaboration.”

A positive way forward

This work has already brought tangible benefits.  They have been invited to shape a proposition within the Integrated Care System that will aim to improve provision and funding of palliative and end of life care across West Yorkshire. This will protect capacity and resource, as well as helping extend reach into more communities and provide them with a voice in the future development of palliative and end of life care for the region. 

“Working with Lucent helped us wade through the treacle and gain clearer insight. Katherine is incredibly astute: she has a razor sharp ability to focus on what’s the most important thing,” says Luen.

“This work enabled us to identify what we are better off doing together whilst still excelling at what we do best as individual hospices. Working together has provided us with a common point of reference and a structure for future work that I am confident will help us ensure more families across West Yorkshire can access the quality of care and expertise available through the hospice network.”