WA30 The dying well community charter and dying matters: a united kingdom (uk) approach to public health and dying.

Abstract

The Dying Matters Coalition, set up following the UK Government's End of Life Care Strategy in 2008, is led by the NCPC (UK umbrella organisation). Dying Matters supports changing knowledge, attitudes and behaviours towards dying, death and bereavement, and through this to make 'living and dying well' the norm. The Coalition has over 30,000 members, and encourages people to talk to friends and family about their end of life wishes, including how they would like to be cared for, where they want to die and their funeral plans. The Dying Well Community Charter is an innovative approach to community development work, working with Pathfinder areas to pilot this approach, rather than encouraging health and social care services to "do" end of life care "to" people, to encourage them to work with community leaders to make end of life care everyone's responsibility. Participants will discover what has worked in the UK, including many low resource options, and a community development approach to palliative care. We worked with 8 Pathfinder communities to ask them to pilot the Dying Well Community Charter approach. Dying Matters was the first national awareness and behaviour change campaign around death, dying and bereavement. Dying Matters has over 30,000 members. Outcome of the Charter work is unknown, but more will be known by the time of the conference. How communities can come together for better death, dying and bereavement. That death and dying are not subjects that need to be avoided, and can be engaged with for better outcomes.