Our work

We undertake a varied range of work, all with the overarching objective of improving people’s experiences of living with declining health, death, dying and bereavement in Scotland.

A survey we undertook in 2017 revealed that our members and stakeholders particularly value the SPPC’s role in:

• Advocating the importance of palliative and end of life care.
• Keeping them informed about policy and practice.
• Enabling them to inform government policy and guidance.
• Facilitating networks/connections across the sector.
• Identifying and spreading good practice.
• Raising public awareness and understanding of good care towards the end of life.
• Managing projects to implement improvements in palliative care.

Products delivered by and through the SPPC in recent years include:

• A monthly ebulletin providing a digest of relevant policy, practice, research and other news to around 3000 inboxes each month.
• The Scottish Palliative Care Guidelines
• Establishment and facilitation of the Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief alliance which provides practical resources and promotes advance planning and supportive behaviours around death, dying and loss.
• Initiation of the annual To Absent Friends festival, which tackles isolation linked to bereavement.
• Annual Conferences
• Facilitation of annual Good Death Weeks, supporting individuals and organisations to identify and address local issues.
• Developing content for key policy documents including Guidance on Caring for People in the Last Days and Hours of Life, Standards of Care for Older People in Hospital and the Scottish Public Health Network report on public health approaches to palliative care. During the development of Scottish Government’s Strategic Framework for Action on Palliative and End of Life Care SPPC made an expert consensus view available to the authors.

SPPC's workplan for 2023-24 can be downloaded here.