The Highland Tour

Supporting a Good End of Life - Projects

Highland Y1 Project

Highland Hospice has just finished working with 3 members of staff from 6 care homes on a pilot Programme to develop palliative care standards. This group of three will now work together to bring about change within their care home. The intervention provided by Connect in Care – the Highland Tour – offered support by working with the care home community itself (residents, relatives, all groups of staff including night staff) to raise understanding and awareness of key issues around palliative care as well as to generate questions, ideas and priorities for further work.

The participating care homes were:

  • Seaforth House Care Home in Golspie
  • Highview House Care Home in Inverness
  • Pentland View Care Home in Thurso
  • Home Farm Nursing Home on the Isle of Skye
  • Marine House Nursing Home in Rosemarkie
  • Moss Park Nursing Home in Fort William
We used an interactive play entitled “I don’t know how to talk about it” to engage people. Their responses (ideas, comments, experiences) were then posted onto a ‘Graffiti Wall’ which others in the community could then look at and add to.

 

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Graffiti Wall Graffiti Wall

 

During the Highland Tour, which took place in June, we worked with 35 residents, 24 relatives and 94 members of staff. It was very well received.

 

Two comments from care homes managers are provided below:

“There was good interaction between staff and relatives. Now, relatives seem to be approaching staff more openly and discussing concerns and fears. One of the volunteers was upset at the time because he had become emotional with one of the residents. However, I talked to him and explained that it was OK. He then went on to say that the resident had actually comforted him and he felt much more confident.”

 

“The event has highlighted the need to be more observant about people’s past and their relationships. Everybody thoroughly enjoyed it and said that it had made them think about people’s feelings and reactions to certain situations. We will now improve our knowledge of residents’ past lives and put things in place to improve communication around end of life.”

 

One Care Home introduced "remembrance services" after a resident had died in order to help all those involved come to terms with what had happened.

 

We have been working with Highland Hospice to create a resource from our experiences of this work to support other care homes. Please click here to see a draft of our series of posters entitled "I don't know how to talk about it".

 


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