Working with Communities to Develop Resilience in End of Life and Bereavement Care: Hospices, Schools and Health Promoting Palliative Care

Abstract

This paper discusses research undertaken to explore and develop practice between a hospice and two primary schools. Action research was used to increase understanding about current practice in, and with, schools and to explore, implement and evaluate models of practice. Seven practice innovations were identified that are in various stages of being piloted. These innovations can be understood as health promoting palliative care activities, due to the process through which they were designed and their focus on developing the capacity of communities to respond to death, dying and bereavement. They demonstrate the diverse role that hospices, can play in developing how communities experience death, dying and bereavement and propose that a broader lens is employed to understand and facilitate end of life and bereavement services.

Keywords:

• end-of-life and bereavement care
• school communities
• hospices
• public health approaches to palliative care
• health promoting palliative care
• action research

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Professor Viviene Cree and Professor Scott Murray for their research supervision and Professor Heather Richardson for her helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. The author would also like to thank Strathcarron Hospice for funding and supporting the PhD research.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sally Paul

Sally Paul is a lecturer in The School of Social Work and Social Policy at The University of Strathclyde. Her current practice and research interests are in: bereavement and loss; end-of-life and palliative care; compassionate communities; participatory research methods; and practice and service development. The University of Strathclyde, School of Social Work and Social Policy, Lord Hope Building, 141 St James Road, Glasgow, G4 0LT, UK. Email: [email protected]