The NHS Confederation welcomes any move to give patients and carers more choice over care at the end of life.

We have been involved in developing the Department of Health's end-of-life care strategy and the NHS End of Life Care Programme. The programme helps healthcare professionals improve end-of-life care for patients regardless of their disease and widen the pool of staff trained in palliative care. The aim is to build local capacity, capability and clinical leadership.

Three best practice tools have been developed to support this work: the gold standards framework for community palliative care, the Liverpool care pathway and the preferred place of care.

Much of our work with the programme has been incorporated into the Government's white paper 'Our health, our care, our say' which gave further recognition to the need for a shift of care from acute hospitals to a community setting and recommended extending these best practice tools to a wider range of professionals. The document also recommended end-of-life care networks, rapid response teams and hospice at-home services.

Our concern is around implementation, including costing of the work programme and support for trusts during the transition period.

How we involve members

We hold specific seminars and meetings to inform our policy positions - invitations either appear in our email bulletin Interchange Alert or are sent out individually. We have regular meetings bringing together key stakeholders with NHS Confederation members.

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