Better Lives, Better Endings: A suite of resources for staff in extra care housing
London housing and care provider Octavia and St Christopher’s Hospice have published their bespoke resource aid for care teams working in extra care housing, to promote a better quality of life for people towards and at the end of their life.
This publication is part of Better Lives, Better Endings, a collaboration between St Christopher’s and Octavia. They initiated the Better Lives, Better Endings project to explore how staff and residents in extra care housing might be empowered to improve residents’ quality of life and experiences at the end of life.
The ‘Better Lives, Better Endings’ resource utilises a suite of tools, to help extra care staff think and talk about the nature of death, dying loss and grief for residents, as well as factors that can improve their quality of life.
The publication is organised into several themes:
- Recognising the need for cultural change
- Understanding dying and what happens at the end of life
- Relationshipbased care in practice
- Understanding what is important
- Acknowledging grief and loss
- Building relationships with external services
For each theme, the resource suite guides care teams through the application of a number of available resources, enabling them to be more confident with dealing with end-of-life care and with supporting residents to ensure their wishes and preferences are met.
It also helps address challenges extra care providers face with communicating, understanding, sharing, documenting and advocating for individuals’ wishes about how they want to live their later years, in addition to death, dying and loss.