Community First and Dorothy House partner-up for listening activity

  • 8 January, 2024
  • News

Understanding what end of life care means to our communities

In partnership with Community First, we are undertaking a listening activity within the Chew Valley community to better understand what is felt to be important locally in terms of life-limiting illness. This might include support to both live well and die well. This may also include support with associated loss and bereavement.

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For Dorothy House, growing our understanding of our community’s aspirations for end of life care is important. Having recently succeeded St Peter’s Hospice in providing clinical care in the area, we want to hear from the local residents regarding what they feel their area wants and needs.

As well as on our 10-bed Inpatient Unit, we offer care in people’s own homes through a dedicated local team. However, this can only ever meet part of what matters most to people at the end of their lives.

Our mission is that everyone has access to outstanding palliative and end of life care, fully acknowledging the vast amount of end of life care that is provided by local services, neighbours and loved ones. We can only achieve that mission together.

Community First is an early adopter of Community Organising techniques. They adopt this approach in an open and effective way to meet and talk to local people on matters that are important to them. It is the first step in seeking to understand what can be achieved by building on the strengths that already exist in communities.

Listening Activity in the Chew Valley area

Community Organisers will visit Chew Valley in January and February 2024. They hope to talk to local people and find out what they have to say. Once the activity is complete, we will work alongside Community First to feedback what has been heard. This will then create opportunity for us to work closely with the community to agree the next steps.

Find out more about Community First here.