Western Isles Alliance

Western Isles Alliance

The Western Isles Palliative Care Committee is looking to form an alliance of locally interested stakeholders from diverse areas such as health and social care, education, voluntary groups, community groups, legal professions and local religious groups. The alliance will consider ways of implementing a health promoting palliative care approach in the Western Isles.

Its first step will be to establish whether other related work is already taking place, and look at how the local community might be involved, to ensure that any work that is undertaken is locally useful and sustainable.

The following have been identified as potential projects within the Western Isles to promote more openness about death, dying and bereavement:

• Christmas trees of Remembrance in prominent public areas so that bereaved people can remember loved ones by writing a personal message on a card and placing on the tree- artwork for cards provided by local schools and funding for trees from local sponsors.
• Making available to the public supportive information on death, dying and bereavement.
• School concerts to be held in local care homes with children, care staff and residents all participating perhaps with reading of original poetry or anecdotes of life stories by residents. This could be later used a starting point for discussions within the classroom about life stories and death and dying.
• Copies of Pilotlight’s book Dying to know on death and dying available in GP surgeries, hospital outpatient departments, libraries and other prominent public spaces.
• Hosting of cafe conversations on death, dying and bereavement with a variety of different groups including the general public, emergency services staff, social services staff, medical and nursing staff, undergraduate nursing students, educational staff, and young mums groups.
• Consult with local solicitors about devising an information pack on ‘How to make a will’ etc
• Develop ‘How to care, what to say’ programmes. These programmes are designed to give advice to family, friends and carers on how to help those with a life-limiting illness and their family or how to help someone who has been bereaved. These could be delivered in the local community, perhaps initially targeting home care staff, voluntary services and large employers such as the local council.
• Host an area-wide palliative care awareness day with a variety of activities aimed at community engagement including prominent display of posters in public places, and local newspaper and media coverage.

The alliance will seek to use tools used successfully in Victoria, Australia, such as the Big Seven Checklist and a Health Promotion Palliative Care Activity Record sheet to evaluate interventions in terms of predicted outcomes, processes and impact evaluations achieved and include mapping of capacity building strategies.

Dr Clare Carolan would like to express her thanks to the Alastair Short Memorial Fellowship for funding a project entitled ‘Health-promoting palliative care: lessons from the other side’ enabling her to travel to Victoria, Australia to learn how a health promoting palliative care approach has been implemented there and bring this learning back to the Western Isles.