St James Place Foundation: care beyond cancer programme

A wide range of projects with diverse aims and objectives, and different groups of target beneficiaries were supported.

The purpose of funding these projects was to:

• learn more about models of care which may be effective in meeting the needs of patients with terminal diseases other than cancer
• help set up services that will remain in operation beyond the initial funding.

A series of posters has been produced about some of the projects funded through the care beyond cancer programme. These are available below as JPEGs to download.

Read in more detail about one of the funded projects at LOROS, the Leicestershire and Rutland Hospice. They received a care beyond cancer grant of £25,000 to fund a project worker to look at how to improve care for people with motor neurone disease and their families.

Targeting disease groups

Some of the projects targeted a particular disease group:

• Severn Hospice grant poster – improving the care of patients with neurological conditions 
• Hospice of St Francis grant poster – collaborative, multidisciplinary work with heart failure patients  
• St Margaret's Hospice grant poster – outreach breathlessness management 
• Tapping House Hospice grant poster – palliative care services for people with end-stage respiratory and cardiac disease 
• Trinity Hospice grant poster – palliative care and heart failure 
• Weston Hospice grant poster – palliative care and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) 
• Ardgowan Hospice grant poster – symptom management for people with congestive cardiac failure 

 

Service models

Other grants were awarded to projects with a particular service model:

• Northern Ireland Hospice Care grant poster – community care for patients and carers
• Katherine House Hospice grant poster – inpatient care for non-cancer patients 
• Overgate Hospice grant poster – developing palliative care in care homes 
• Rowcroft Hospice grant poster – developing palliative care skills in generalist settings 
• St Nicholas' Hospice grant poster – improving 'bad news' communication with people with learning disabilities 
• St Andrew's Hospice grant poster – early referral to hospice care for non-malignant conditions 
• St David's Hospice grant poster – Hospice at Home service 

 

Complementary therapies

Some hospices received grants to extend their complementary therapies services:

• Butterwick Hospice grant poster – an aromatherapy service for patients with multiple sclerosis 
• St Christopher's Hospice grant poster – access to complementary therapies in the community 

 

Psychosocial support

We also awarded grants to projects providing psychosocial support:

• St John's Hospice grant poster – befriending project 
• St Catherine’s Hospice  grant poster– enhanced wellbeing for neurological and heart failure patients 

 

Children and young adults

One project was set up to support children and young adults:

• Ellenor Hospice at Home grant poster – care for young people in transition from adolescence to adulthood   

  

Final projects round

In 2007 eight grants were awarded in the final round of care beyond cancer grants. Brief details follow:

• Barnsley Hospice: Advance care planning and support for patients with progressive long term neurological diseases' - addressing the needs of patients with neurological diseases in the day care facility of the hospice.
  

• Dorothy House Hospice: Developing a model for collaborative working between community nurse specialists and community matrons for patients with a non cancer diagnosis - finding out new ways of working to ensure patients with a non cancer diagnosis receive optimum care.

• Hospice of St Francis: Making Choices - end of life planning for groups currently invisible to palliative care - allowing people traditionally without access to palliative care, including those in care homes, the opportunity to make choices around end of life issues.

• LOROS, Leicester: Empowerment of community matrons in end of life care' - developing innovative care pathways that incorporate collaborative working between community matrons and medical specialist palliative care professionals.
  

• Martlets Hospice: A patient led clinical directive pro forma: development and dissemination - developing and disseminating a tool to aid communication between patients, carers and health care professionals when advance care planning in the context of non cancer.

• St Christopher's Hospice: Keeping communications alive -  using music as a means of communication and support for dementia patients and their informal carers. 

• St Joseph's Hospice, London: Diversity in heart failure and its management at end of life - developing a pathway of care for people with heart failure, specifically Bangladeshi and Somali communities living in Tower Hamlets.
  

• St Luke's Hospice, Cheshire: Development of palliative care for dementia patients and their carers - expanding and evaluating the role of specialist palliative care services in dementia care.

 

Acknowledgement

Help the Hospices is grateful for the support of St James's Place Foundation which provided funding to enable the projects to take place.