The Royal Borough of Greenwich: Partnership Working across the borough

There is strong partnership working in Greenwich to develop and improve the local offer. The overall objective is that people at the end of their lives and their families can be well supported and their outcomes improved through care and support that is integrated around the individual. This case study forms part of our end of life care guide for councils.

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A Strategy Group meets regularly with active participation and input from partner organisations across our local system. Their objective has been to map the person’s journey across the network of local services (from early identification, care planning, specialist clinical provision to bereavement support after someone has died). The Strategy Group also identifies inconsistency or variation as well as examples of good practice.

The ambitions in 2018/19 and this current year have been very focused on understanding the existing provider landscape, early identification of end of life patients and connectivity between providers.

Partners on the Greenwich Strategy Group have identified areas where services could be improved, and the following projects of work have been implemented or are in development:

  • Improved capacity for RBG’s Occupational Therapy team to support known clients with palliative needs in the community. The aim of the project is to help reduce pressures on family carers and other domiciliary services and reduce the likelihood of emergency attendances at A&E.
  • End of life care education programme for care homes – being developed in line with enhanced health in care homes framework.
  • A partnership initiative being piloted with St Christopher’s Hospice to provide bespoke domiciliary care to people in the last year of life, where the support workers have all worked in a hospice environment and have undertaken additional training to ensure good understanding of the support required for end of life.
  • Education and training for GPs to help them identify people approaching end of life in a timelier fashion so that they can access better support, earlier. This includes training around communication, symptom management and understanding of care pathways.
  • The Royal Borough of Greenwich had a report at its Health and Well-Being Board in January 2020, which outlined work undertaken by the council and partners on end of life care.  It outlines the services available in Greenwich delivered by a range of organisations, improvements being made, and the steps being taken to strengthen collaboration across all relevant partners so that services are as co-ordinated as possible..

The Strategy Group believe that most improvement will be achieved by continuing to prioritise areas which have already shown good results for patients, but which could be stretched further. These include effectively identifying the number of patients who would benefit from an anticipatory care plan, increased number of people with a CMC in place and working as a partnership to train, recruit and retain staff across all sectors.

An infographic was produced as an appendix to a Health and Wellbeing board report on end of life care in the borough. The slide gives key data so that the council and its partners can understand how people die in the Borough.

It includes basic numbers on how many deaths there are and the main causes of death. It also provides details on how where people die. The slide helps the council and its partners begin to understand more about end of life in Royal Greenwich

Health and Wellbeing Board Agenda 15 January 2020 - Royal Borough of Greenwich (pdf)