Using a Hospice Hub model to break down barriers

Heart of Kent Hospice wanted to increase its ability to help people in the community to live as well as possible with a terminal illness. They developed an open access drop-in hub that would encourage more people to come to the hospice at an earlier stage of illness.

The Hub has become an easy and flexible way to access Hospice care. People can visit the Hub with no referral or appointment needed and get access to a wide range of services in one place. People find the Hub incredibly valuable, and regularly recommend it to their friends and loved ones.

The hub is run by a dedicated Hub co-ordinator and a team of trained volunteers are on hand to welcome patients and carers, listen and answer questions and direct people to the relevant service or colleague.

Hospice colleagues attend the hub on a rota, and there is a schedule of weekly and monthly hub sessions. By dropping in to the hub, people can access services under a“one stop shop” approach. Here they can get access to:

• community palliative care support
• specialist dementia support
• complementary therapy
• welfare support
• chaplaincy and spiritual support
• counselling
• social work support
• occupational therapy and physiotherapy
• support for carers.

During drop-in sessions, people can access group support on topics such as relaxation, staying steady, planning for the future and end of life care at home.

Specialist groups include:

• a six week Making Memories programme for patients with dementia
• a dementia café
• a bereavement drop-in
• a Motor Neurone Disease (MND) group.

There is also a regular family support group, supporting families with young children to prepare for the loss of a loved one.

Since the hub was developed, people have been coming to the hospice at an earlier stage of their illness. This means the hospice can build a relationship with them, helping them access the support they need, when they need it.

As a result of the new Hospice Hub model, Heart of Kent is now caring for more people than ever and has over 1,000 local people on its caseload across all its services (from a population of 266,000 people).

The hospice is able to map patient journeys through first attending the hub, completing an advance care plan and then being admitted to the inpatient unit for end of life care.

Key facilitators

The Hub is set up in a café style, which creates an informal, friendly atmosphere. Heart of Kent Hospice secured a grant from the Masonic Charitable Foundation via Hospice UK, which enabled them to buy new furniture to support the pedagogy of the hub space.

They  also used the grant to set up a more private area, where people could talk to hospice colleagues about sensitive or confidential topics such as seeking welfare support.

Challenges

The first challenge was supporting the volunteers to understand the new model, to embrace the changes and to ensure its success. Volunteers are one of the Hospice's biggest asset and now they love the model and can see its value.

Whilst supporting patients with palliative care needs, the hospice has had to to encourage some to seek advice from their GP for general medical issues. The team aims to create a balance of supporting patients without encouraging them to over-rely on the hospice. This helps empower people to be as independent as possible and create memories outside of hospice care.

The success of the Hub model has led Heart of Kent to review whether there is a need to expand the clinical drop-in sessions. The hospice is considering whether to include a purely clinical drop-in session once a week.