Working together to build compassionate communities
Posted: 20 December 2023
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How Keech Hospice Care works with local organisations to empower local communities to support each other and gain confidence in having conversations about death, dying and bereavement.
The Compassionate Communities team at Keech Hospice Care has worked hard to build relationships with a range of local groups and organisations, such as:
the University of Bedfordshire
local Further Education colleges
schools
adult learning centres
libraries
the local police force
funeral directors
social prescribers
other local charities.
In partnership with these organisations, they use a community-led, creative approach to raise awareness of issues surrounding death, dying and bereavement. They find solutions that are tailored to each community, empowering them to better support each other.
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Examples
The team were invited to speak at the University of Bedfordshire’s World Social Work Day and Public Health Conference. They used flashcards to start conversations around different statements about death and dying. The students at the event were really engaged with the session and this led to developing a “Compassionate Friends” offer at the university. Students from a wide range of disciplines at the university are now planning a fashion show to raise money for the hospice.
At the Adult Learning Centre in Luton, the team have run two events to promote the hospice and raise awareness of end of life care. This involved representatives from the Fundraising, Supportive Care and Volunteering teams as well as Compassionate Communities. By the end of the event, 18 people had signed up to volunteer with the hospice. Rather than giving the new volunteers a narrow set of options about how they could volunteer, the team spoke to each one of them about their skills and interests. It soon became clear that several of them had language skills that would be really helpful for the hospice.
The Compassionate Communities team works closely with Keech’s Education team. Together they invited students who are studying health and child care at Bedford College to visit the hospice. The event included activities and a tour to learn more about what career opportunities the hospice can offer.
The hospice works with the local police force’s wellbeing team, helping them feel more able to talk to support colleagues who are bereaved or caring for someone with a life limiting condition. As part of this they have delivered workshops on police training days.
They are planning further workshops to help police officers support members of the public who have been bereaved, for example when delivering bad news.
The team built links with a local mosque, which led to them being able to employ Mohammad Rahman as a Community Connector. Mohammad works to develop links between Keech and the local South Asian Community.
The team has explored creative ways to start conversations about death and dying. They organised a performance of Blue Skies, a play that encourages people to talk about end of life issues such as advance care planning and bereavement support.
Facilitators, challenges and advice
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Key facilitators
Keech already had relationships with some key local organisations, such as the University of Bedfordshire. The Compassionate Communities team has been able to capitalise on this to develop programmes.
Challenges
The concept of ‘Compassionate Communities’ is not familiar to everyone, so the team need to explain what this is and how it works. Typically, it takes around four to five meetings for someone to understand what the term means and how workshops or events might benefit their community.
Although this process takes time, it has a crucial role in developing meaningful connections for the team.
Tips and advice
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Be creative. Find out what matters to people and tailor your approach to make it engaging for them. In the past, the team have used an adapted version of ‘Jenga’ and staged a play as a way to start conversations with different groups of people.
Take your time. Don’t be disappointed if numbers aren’t huge to start with, you can adapt and build from there.
Be flexible. Adapt your approach depending on what matters most to the people you are working with. If people are interested in volunteering, find out what their skills are and think about how you can best utilise them.
Future development
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The team is working with colleagues from Human Resources to start conversations in the community about careers in the hospice sector. This includes running recruitment days, giving tours to students and setting up volunteer to career pathways.
In the long term, the team hopes to build ongoing relationships with local young people by engaging with them at key points in their education – at school, college and university. This could mean they see the same cohort of students at several different points, building on their interest in the sector. More opportunities for students to visit the hospice are planned for the new year.
The team also plans to improve engagement with communities that are sometimes neglected by care providers, for example people who are Deaf and hard of hearing. This includes running British Sign Language (BSL) workshops for Keech staff and volunteers, arranging a BSL-interpreted visit and tours, and a service for telephone calls and face to face conversation with the hospice.
