ALLIANCE responds to Palliative Care Matters for All strategy consultation
- Area of Work: Policy and Research
- Type: News Item
- Published: 10th January 2025
The ALLIANCE welcome the aims of widening access to palliative care, but actions must be underpinned by resources and accountability.
The Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland (the ALLIANCE) have submitted a response to the Scottish Government’s consultation on the “Palliative Care Matters for All” strategy. The strategy aims to improve access to palliative care and bereavement support, support people to talk more openly about dying and bereavement, and ensure people have opportunities to plan ahead.
The ALLIANCE welcomes the aims of the strategy, as we consider accessible, high quality palliative care to be an essential component of the right to health and believe that it should be available to everyone who would benefit from it, for as long as they need it. We recognise however that this is unfortunately not currently the case, and that more must be done to expand palliative care provision for people living with life shortening and terminal conditions.
The actions laid out within this strategy must be underpinned by sufficient resources and meaningful accountability. People accessing and delivering palliative care must be confident that services are on the best possible footing, and that where they experience delivery failures that breach their right to health, they can seek appropriate redress. Everybody deserves to be able to live a good life and have the best health possible, and this is particularly important for people living with life shortening or terminal conditions. So too do they deserve to be able to have a good death, in dignity and in a place they feel comfortable.
This response follows previous work by the ALLIANCE responding to the proposed Right to Palliative Care Bill submitted by Miles Briggs MSP.
You can read the full response via the resource links below.
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