A good death does honour to a whole life
At West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership we are ambitious to ensure the palliative and end of life care our citizens recieve is high quality. This includes preparing for death as well as hospice care.
We know that there can be inequalities which can impact on people's access to palliative and end of life care.
The Partnership's vision is to improve palliative care and end of life services across the region to ensure the residents of West Yorkshire receive the support they need and can die in a place of their choice, with consideration given to what matters to them and who matters to them.
Our Framework
The Ambitions for Palliative and End of Life Care framework, calls for a collective integrated response, across health and social care. It’s recommended that, the six ambitions of the PEoLC framework are used to develop a vision of PEoLC for the residents of West Yorkshire:
1. Each person is seen as an individual
2. Each person gets fair access to care
3. Maximising comfort and wellbeing
4. Care is coordinated
5. All staff are prepared to care
6. Each community is prepared to help
Grief and loss is universal, however the sharpness of that experience and the memories left for families and friends can be shaped by supportive and tailored care. We want our region to be known for it’s approach to palliative and end of life care and we want to start the conversation to ensure people’s wishes are at the centre of their treatment and their treatment is compassionate, informed, kind, local and personal.
Palliative and End of Life Care services report (January 2024)
NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (WY ICB) Palliative and End of Life Care (PEoLC) Programme commissioned Healthwatch to engage with residents of West Yorkshire on their experiences of end-of-life care services.
The West Yorkshire PEoLC Programme is committed to developing an end-of-life care vision to ensure people receive the support they need and can die in a place of their choice, with consideration given to what and who matters to them. The programme wants this vision to be informed by people’s experiences, positive or otherwise, and will include these within the programme’s health needs assessment for end-of-life care across West Yorkshire.
For further information about this report and the PEoLC programme’s work, please contact Kulvant Sandhu- senior programme manager for unpaid carers, personalisation and PEoLC kulvant.
PEoLC Conference 2024
On the 18th March 2024 we welcomed over 100 speakers, exhibitors, workshop facilitators and delegates to our annual conference. Below you can find slides from the day:
- The Thinking Ahead Programme: A tool for supporting quality of life, self-management and Advance Care Planning for patients with incurable cancer
- Role of the Medical Examiner / Death Certification
- No barriers here' project - Advance Care Planning and access to palliative and end of life care for people with learning disabilities. Children and transitions
- The role of the Occupational Therapy in PEoLC
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Keynote speaker: People's experiences of PEoLC in West Yorkshire
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Keynote speaker: Health inequalities at the end of life
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Keynote speaker: Progressing the PEoLC agenda in new NHS England
'Together for better palliative and end of live care' report 2025
In May 2023 at St Gemma’s Hospice in Leeds, a group of people met, some old friends and some for the first time, on a sunny spring day. There they shared share their hopes (and fears) for the future of palliative and end of life care (PEoLC) across West Yorkshire. This was to be the first of four workshops jointly hosted by the West Yorkshire Hospice Collaborative and the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership, with the following workshops hosted by Marie Curie, Bradford and Wakefield Hospice. Partnership working between the West Yorkshire Hospice collaborative and the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership was imperative for several important reasons. First, we share an ambition for everyone across West Yorkshire to have access to the right palliative and end of life care, at the right time in the place of their choosing. Second, we know that supporting loved ones through the palliative and end of life care journey and through bereavement is a much-valued part of the services provided and has long-term, positive benefits for people’s mental and physical health. Third, we know that the need and demand for both children’s and adult’s services are both set to increase, meaning that there is a pressing imperative to “get ahead of demand”. The Together for better palliative and end of life care report (January 2025) captures the output from the four workshops. By looking at the system through the eyes of communities who are seldom reached currently, the workshops began to identify specific barriers for those groups and issues that are common for all users of PEoLC. We hope that the report will be useful for those that attended the workshops, others across West Yorkshire who are engaged in delivering PEoLC as well as others who want to draw on the West Yorkshire experience
Improving palliative and end of life care in West Yorkshire
We are committed to ensuring that everyone in our region can experience high-quality palliative and end of life care (PEoLC) that respects their wishes and meets their needs. We believe that everyone deserves the chance to die with dignity, in their preferred place, surrounded by those they love.
To shape this vision, we partnered with Healthwatch to gather the voices and experiences of people across West Yorkshire who have accessed or supported someone through end of life care. This engagement, carried out between 2023 - 2024, helped inform a comprehensive health needs assessment (HNA).
What the report covers
The HNA evaluates the current state of PEoLC in West Yorkshire, identifying strengths, gaps and opportunities for improvement. It draws on a wide range of data sources and has been developed in collaboration with:
- hospitals, hospices and care homes
- individuals with lived experience
- voluntary sector partners
- local authorities and Place-based public health teams
The findings are framed around NHS England’s Ambitions Framework for Palliative and End of Life Care and will help shape more consistent, compassionate and equitable services across the five Places of West Yorkshire: Bradford District and Craven, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield District.
Why this matters
The HNA places a strong focus on tackling health inequalities and improving access to PEoLC for underserved communities - including those living in poverty, people with learning disabilities or serious mental illness, unpaid carers, ethnic minority groups and individuals experiencing homelessness.
The report was presented to the West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board in December 2024 and we are now calling for a system-wide commitment to address the findings and take forward a regional transformation programme for PEoLC.
Read the West Yorkshire palliative and end of life care health needs assessment.