St John’s Hospice North Lancashire and South Lakes
Helping people to feel more confident talking about death and dying
St John’s Last Days Matter programme is a 2.5-hour course to change perceptions of dying and help people to prepare for the death of a loved one. The programme is entirely free and is delivered nationally by trained volunteers.
The hospice was aware that people are often ill-equipped to do or say the right thing when someone they know is approaching the end of their life. As a society, we have a cultural aversion to confronting death and as a result people often have lots of regrets after someone dies.
St John’s recognised that people needed support to address even the simplest things: how to recognise the signs that someone is dying; how to ask for help; how to say goodbye; and how to get your affairs in order, both emotionally and financially. So the hospice consulted with recently bereaved and grieving people, legal experts, local faith groups, medics and academics to devise a programme of education to help people feel more comfortable discussing such issues, and therefore to help their loved ones to have a good death.
The team identified five themes and produced a set of notes and a short, professionally produced film about each theme, to help people facilitate conversations with their loved ones.
Since 2023 the course has been delivered monthly at in-person training sessions to members of the public, as well as to over 100 GPs. And 200 facilitators have been trained at hospices in six counties from Cumbria to Cornwall, who have since gone on to train others.
The cost to develop the materials was just £4,000. The hospice has made no financial gain from Last Days Matter, feeling it was too important an issue to charge money for – and it has refused requests from other end-of-life charities who wanted to buy the intellectual property and charge to deliver it. “We are fearful that the original intention to create a social movement and get people talking would be lost by professionalising it or badging it with a big-name charity’s branding,” St John’s said.
The hospice plans to update the materials to include assisted dying once that legislation has progressed further.
Charity Awards judge Shane Ryan, senior adviser at the National Lottery Community Fund, said Last Days Matter represented a “valuable, innovative approach to an important social need”.
“Death and dying remain significant taboos in society despite their universality, and this programme effectively demystifies important conversations that can significantly improve end-of-life experiences,” he said. “The focus on empowering ordinary community members rather than just healthcare professionals is particularly valuable, recognising that most end-of-life care happens outside formal healthcare settings.” He also that that the deliberate choice to keep the programme free despite commercial opportunities demonstrated “principled leadership”.
Katie Ghosh, chief executive of KIDS, described the project as “innovative, brilliant and visionary”; although she cautioned that the hospice’s resistance to generating any income from dissemination of the course would inevitably limit its reach.
CC Reg. no. 1157030
