Developing the hospice workforce
The hospice workforce of the future will need to evolve and adapt to keep up with changes and challenges in palliative and end of life care.
Hospice UK works with members and other strategic partners to address challenges in the workforce. We want to help ensure that hospices have a workforce that is equipped to meet future demands.
Future Vision
The discovery phase of our Future Vision programme highlighted trends that will impact on the hospice workforce. This includes evolving delivery models, changing community needs and challenges with recruitment and retention. Hospices will have to address changing working patterns, greater flexibility of roles, a shortage of skilled workers and new educational arrangements.
As a result, there is a need for new thinking, strong leadership and innovative delivery of services.
Roles and skills of the workforce
As part of the work of the Commission into the Future of Hospice Care, we held an event with Skills for Health, the Sector Skills Council for health, which explored what the future of healthcare could look like, how hospices would fit into this context and the roles and skills that will be needed.
The report from this event is an invaluable resource, providing recommendations about how the hospice workforce should change to meet the opportunities and challenges in the future.
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'Resilience: A framework supporting hospice staff to flourish in stressful times' provides guidance on interventions from board level to the individual for building a resilient and flourishing hospice workforce. Download the framework
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The Commission into the Future of Hospice Care was established in 2011 in order to provide guidance, information and options for hospices with the aim of informing their strategic position and support in addressing the changing and growing needs of their local communities. Two years after the Commission’s final report, a review was conducted into the impact for our member hospices of the Commission’s work.
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'Working towards a hospice workforce that is fit for the future' is a working paper which lists the roles and skills required in the hospice workforce in the future, and provides some recommendations to help the sector provide these skills. Author: Skills for Health.
Grants for hospice staff
Hospice UK supports hospice staff members' professional development via a range of bursaries funded by the Masonic Charitable Foundation (MCF).
Explore how they have helped a range of staff develop their skills, confidence and careers, below.
Support we offer
We offer a number of programmes and resources to support the development of the hospice workforce. Please get in touch below if you would like to find out more.