Social care and palliative care blog

New blog on social care and palliative care

Social care/palliative care, a new blog starting, by St Christopher''s Hospice policy and development adviser, Malcolm Payne, aims to keep social care professionals in touch with end-of-life care issues and raise awareness and understanding social care among palliative care professionals. Malcolm Payne has been a leading writer and educator in social care for many years, author of texts used worldwide; his blog is therefore likely to attract interest and controversy among social care professionals. The link with St Christopher''s, a world leader in palliative care innovation will attract involvement from palliative care professionals. The Blog is sponsored by Misys Chartiable Foundation.

The government is moving into an important period of change in social care policy and service organisation, as it develops self-directed care and personalisation as policies for organising care. This will have an impact in the NHS, and particularly on palliative care because of its emphasis on high-quality, responsive care provision. The interaction of NHS continuing care and community care for older people means that changes in social care and palliative care policy will affect each other. The government’s end-of-life care strategy suggests that all social care staff should be better informed about palliative care.

But palliative care professionals, working mainly in healthcare, are often unaware of developments in social care and social care professionals also do not know much about palliative care development. The blog combines up-to-the-minute commentary and information on changes in social care policy with awareness of palliative care developments.

Barbara Monroe, chief executive, St Christopher’s Hospice, said: “Our aim with this blog from a leading social work writer, is to keep palliative care professionals in touch with debate and information in the important field of social care. While we often think of palliative care as mainly a healthcare service, social care reduces the social isolation that many people experience when they have a serious illness, and helps to strengthen the family and carers of a dying person as they provide care and cope with bereavement. Locating social care as a crucial element of palliative care will be an important contribution of this web innovation’.