Ambition 6 of the Palliative and End of Life Ambitions National Framework focuses on Communities being prepared to help - Compassionate communities as an approach helps address this challenge.
We at Compassionate Communities UK have found in our training sessions that considerable confusion exists about how to approach engagement and development in compassionate community projects. There is a tendency to think about compassionate communities as something on its own rather than something that can be integrated into the routine ’business’ of hospices, enhancing the day to day clinical care and seeing it as a natural part of conversations of any sort with communities members. There is also a tendency to approach compassionate communities as another service that the hospice provides for the community, doing something ’to’ communities rather than discovering the rich resources and treasures that are already out there.
To try and help develop existing programmes, and to stimulate interest in new ways of working, we are putting on this session. We will explore discovering community treasures, realigning services in the context of community and how to start community conversations from a public health palliative care perspective.
