Our innovative Future Wishes service began in July 2020 in response to increased need during the pandemic, and redoubled our commitment to collaboration, supporting stretched community healthcare professionals like GPs.
The service works with care homes across the district and delivers advance care planning to care home residents using video conferencing by specially trained volunteers.
Our volunteers meet with residents to create their future care wishes and this is usually supported by the care home manager and family, if the person would like them to be involved.
Clinical Director at Saint Michael’s, Dr Liz Brown, said: “Advance care planning is really important, as without it people might not get the treatment or care that they want in the future.
“We also know that family members can struggle afterwards with whether they made the right choice for someone. Talking about it in advance is really important – if we don’t talk about it we don’t
know! Advance care planning is all about making sure the person is at the heart of their care, all the time.”
As part of this work, Saint Michael’s has been piloting a scheme where families of residents were invited to two sessions run by the Hospice medical team. These focused on how treatment
decisions are made and what treatment decisions families might be involved in.
100 per cent of those involved in the pilot said they would recommend these sessions to other families living with dementia.
