Prospect Hospice
Improving end of life support in care homes
Prospect Hospice and Swindon Clinical Commissioning Group were faced with the simple fact that too many people were dying in hospital in their area – people who did not wish or need to. These people were enduring unnecessary discomfort, hindering hospital staff, and wasting resources.
The charity and the CCG identified a need to help care home staff learn more about how to provide palliative care to the terminally ill.
Most care homes in Swindon are privately-owned, so the charity carefully held meetings and built relationships with managers in the local private sector. The charity clinical nurse specialist team was then able to begin working with care homes to jointly review residents and formulate care plans.
The charity also worked to build the skills and confidence of care homes’ own staff. Prospect Hospice began hosting six-weekly care home support groups as well as an annual care homes conference.
The programme was a success. The standard of palliative care has increased, and almost 1,700 care home residents have been supported.
Judges were attracted to Prospect Hospice in part because it was addressing an issue which was absolutely central to modern society – helping people who are dealing with prolonged end of life issues to end their existence with dignity. One described the service as “desperately needed”.
An additional benefit was that the work was taking place in a sector which is under-resourced and in need of support – the private healthcare sector.
Quite apart from the benefit to patients, the process also showed considerable financial benefits, by avoiding unnecessary hospital admission.
Judges were impressed by the in-depth cross-sector collaboration involving a charity, a healthcare body, and staff at private providers. Judges also once again identified a strong case for replicability across other providers.
www.prospect-hospice.net
CC reg no: 280093
MAC-UK
Offering mental health and wellbeing support to young people at risk of offending
Project Future works in one of the most deprived ward in the London Borough of Haringey. With a relatively large number of residents under the age of 20, crime and unemployment is high, resulting in deeply entrenched patterns of social exclusion and offending. Project Future is a partnership between MAC-UK, Haringey Council and Barnet, Enfield & Haringey Mental Health Trust, set up to tackle these problems, offering a psychologically-informed service for young men aged 16 to 25 with experiences of offending, serious violence and gang affiliation. By offering mental health and wellbeing support, it aimed to reduce offending and improve access to education, employment and training. In October 2016, 133 young people were attending the project. Some 65 per cent had accessed some form of mental health support, 62 per cent had accessed employability support, and 53 per cent had accessed offending support.
Wales Air Ambulance Charity
Bringing advanced care more quickly to those who need it
Wales has a challenging and diverse terrain, covering over 8,000 square miles of remote countryside, bustling towns and cities, and vast mountain ranges. With limited specialist and trauma hospitals, it could be hours before patients received the treatment they needed. Conversations between The Wales Air Ambulance Charity and doctors identified that more lives could be saved if advanced consultant-level care could be provided on board the charity’s aircraft. Together, they set about making this a reality. The project launched in April 2015, and over the following year, the new Flying Medic service attended to 1,285 patients across Wales. They administered 150 emergency anaesthetics and conducted 47 blood transfusions, which are just two of the treatments that were not previously available outside of a hospital environment. Pioneering approaches such as these have already saved lives and helped to relieved pressure on frontline NHS emergency services.