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St Helena Hospice and the NHS North East Essex promotes dying matters awareness week

15 March 2010

St Helena Hospice and the NHS North East Essex promotes dying matters awareness week

Today St Helena Hospice and the NHS North East Essex join just under 7,000 members of the Dying Matters Coalition for a week of action to encourage people to talk about their wishes towards the end of their lives, including where they want to die and their funeral plans with friends, family and loved ones.

The Dying Matters Coalition has been set up by the National Council for Palliative Care (NCPC), to raise awareness and provide the support and information needed to have these conversations with loved ones. It aims to help make dying well a natural part of a good life and through this help change attitudes and behaviours towards dying, death and bereavement and raise the profile and improve end of life care.

Research commissioned by the Dying Matters Coalition shows that less than a third (29%) of people have discussed their wishes around dying and only 4% have written advance care plans. Consequently, despite 70% of us saying that we’d like to die at home, currently 60% die in hospitals, illustrating the importance of talking openly about our wishes if we want them to be met.

Rosy Stamp, Hospice Director, St Helena Hospice, said: “In the busy daily lives we all lead it’s very easy to put off planning for death, especially as it’s a difficult subject to talk about. It is really important to have these conversations with people close to us to make sure that their wishes and our own are met. Once the subject is opened it is much easier to return to it again. Children are often much less inhibited than grownups and ask very perceptive questions and there are lots of excellent books to introduce the subject of death to children. It can be very comforting and reassuring to have written a will and made plans and I hope people will take the opportunity this week to start thinking and talking together about the subject.”

Frances Rowe, NHS North East Essex, said “by commissioning appropriate services we can help ensure that patients die in a place of their choosing.  By providing patients and their families with information about the services and the opportunity to complete a Preferred Priorities of Care document, they are then in a situation where they can make an informed choice about where they would like to be cared for.

A programme of events to highlight Dying Matters Awareness Week will be taking place across the country, organised by Dying Matters members, who include organisations from across the NHS and the voluntary and independent health and care sectors, including hospices, care homes, charities supporting old people, children and bereavement, from social care and housing sectors, from a wide range of faith organisations, community organisations, schools and colleges, academic bodies, trade unions, the legal profession and from the funeral sector.

Hilary Fisher, Director of the Dying Matters Coalition said: “This week is a great opportunity for people to begin conversations, it is in everyone’s interest to talk about the practicalities and how we feel about dying before it is too late. Knowing loved ones have died where they wanted to be and had the funeral they would have wished can bring enormous comfort to those left behind.”