End of Life Care Strategy 2015 - 2020

The Isle of Wight Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and partner agencies – Isle of Wight NHS Trust, Earl Mountbatten Hospice and Isle of Wight Council are currently consulting on this important strategy. End of Life Care is an important element of the Island’s innovative My Life a Full Life programme to improve the health and wellbeing of people.

Following extensive stakeholder engagement with organisations and individuals across the Island in the development of this draft strategy, the Clinical Commissioning Group is now seeking feedback on the strategy and what needs to happen over the next five years to ensure that Island residents experience good end of life care and support.

End of Life Care Strategy

The aim of the End of Life Care Strategy 2015 – 2020 for the Isle of Wight is to help those with advanced, progressive and incurable illness to live as well as possible until they die, regardless of their diagnosis. To support people and their carers through the prevention and relief of suffering through early identification and assessment, effective treatment of pain and other symptoms, and the provision of  psychological, spiritual, social and practical support. The strategy reflects the local needs of the Isle of Wight population and the national guidance on end of life care.

In developing this strategy we have consulted widely with stakeholder groups across the Island, reviewed the care that we deliver for dying people against the five priority areas set out by the Leadership Alliance for the Care of Dying People (LACDP) and have considered how we will demonstrate delivery of each of these for individual dying people and those important to them.

We have also considered a broad range of national literature, including NHS England’s Actions for End of Life Care 2014-16 and the NHS Five Year Forward View.

The Isle of Wight End of Life Care Strategy key recommendations include:

• Review end of life care on the Island against the Leadership Alliance for the Care of Dying People (LACDP) five priority areas and consider how we will deliver each of them for individuals and those important to them.
• Develop holistic and co-ordinated Island-wide end of life care offering a ‘menu of choice’ – an individualised journey within one integrated system of care across the whole health and social care system.
• Increase public awareness around end of life, encouraging culture change to enable good conversations to take place and ensure good access to information to allow informed planning.
• Train, support and empower staff, give them the confidence to identify and care for those at the end of their lives, and the tools to communicate clearly and sensitively with individuals and those important to them, including them in any decisions about their care. Embed this training as mandatory for all staff, committing organisational priority and resources.
• Implement the necessary systems to enable rapid, 24/7 access to end of life care with the right resources in the right place, allowing those at the end of their life to die in their place of choice and to ensure that they and their carers / families are fully supported in that choice.
• Develop one individualised care plan, agreed with the person and their carers / families, and a shared, person held record: regularly reviewed, easily updated, easily accessed and visible to all who need to see it.
• Assign a dedicated keyworker to each person, to coordinate and review their care across all services in all settings and develop fast track processes to access continuing care for those nearing the end of life.

Whilst progress is already underway with many of these recommendations we still want your views on the strategy so we can make sure it reflects the needs of the Island.

The End of Life Care Strategy should cover the needs of all people at the end of life, embedding end of life care as ‘business as usual’ across the Island’s health and social care system - make it everyone’s business.

A Public consultation took place from 3rd July 2015 to 7^th August 2015.

Thank you to all those that contributed.