North West London residents tell us what is important to them about community-based specialist palliative care
Over 40 people attended the first community-based specialist palliative care event in North West London on Monday 13 December 2021 to tell us what is important to them about community-based specialist palliative care.
During the meeting we heard how community-based specialist palliative care was an essential service during the last phase of life and the need to ensure that there is seamless integration with hospital based palliative care services and more general services such as district and community nursing and general practice.
View the recording of the meeting
Robyn Doran, Borough Director for Brent Integrated Care Partnership who is leading on the review for the North West London Integrated Care System, said: We heard some really powerful testimony from people who had cared for relatives in their last phase of life and how important it was that they received high quality care and support and the impact not having good care could have.”
Other points attendees raised included:
- The number of elderly people living on their own is increasing with no one to care for them.
- The number of people living with dementia is increasing which brings increased complexity of care needs.
- The way someone dies can have a big impact on the person caring for them and we need to ensure that support for relatives and carers continues after the person has died.
- Whilst people often say they would like to die at home, they often change their mind and we need to make sure that services are flexible enough to accommodate this.
- We need to ensure we consider the impact of caring for someone who is dying on the day to day life of the person doing so.
- An anonymised transcript of the event plus further write up of written comments will be made available in the near future.
Robyn, added: “We will take all the points raised into our future planning and there will be further opportunities to be involved. Over the next few weeks the NHS has been asked to concentrate on supporting the vaccination effort and as a result we may need to extend the engagement period to ensure we have time to have all the detailed conversation we want to have. We will keep everyone updated but if you have any questions please get in touch.”
For further information, email nhsnwlccg.endoflife@nhs.net