Chair of the Assembly Cross Party Groups on Hospices and Palliative Care and on Funerals and Bereavement Care, Mark Isherwood AM, has called on the Welsh Government to ensure that appropriate bereavement support is available to everyone, regardless of the setting or circumstances of their loved one’s death.
Questioning the First Minister in the Assembly Chamber this week, the North Wales AM expressed concern that the Welsh Government ‘Delivery Plan for the Critically Ill’ makes no reference to the importance of bereavement care for families where an adult has died following critical care, and asked what is being done to address this.
He said:
“Forty per cent of the 33,000 people who die in Wales each year die in the community, 55 per cent in hospital. Although bereavement support following a child's death in Paediatric intensive Care Units is referred to in the current Welsh Government ‘Delivery Plan for the Critically Ill’, the Plan does not make reference to the importance of bereavement care for families where an adult has died following critical care.
“A significant proportion of bereavement support is provided by our charitable hospices in Wales, with some 2,300 families supported in 2017-18, but it's understood that families whose loved one dies in the acute setting after receiving intensive and critical care are missing out on the bereavement care they need through lack of signposting or availability. It's certainly a concern that's been raised with me by the adult hospices in North Wales, which also tell me that the Health Board had not consulted them on their Palliative Care Plan.
“So, how is the Welsh Government working with NHS Wales, ensuring that every family experiencing bereavement has access to appropriate bereavement support, regardless of the setting or circumstances of their loved one's death?”
In his response, the First Minister said the Welsh Government has recently commissioned a piece of work funded through the End-of-Life Care Board, and that is a scoping study into the breadth of bereavement care services in Wales.
He added: “The board has asked Marie Curie and Cardiff University to lead on that study. It begins by mapping existing support and then identifying areas where further services are needed. We can undertake to make sure that the points the Member has raised today are fed into that study”.
