Sharing Current Scottish Practice

Widening Access at the Prince & Princess of Wales Hospice

The Culturally Sensitive Project was established at the Prince & Princess of Wales Hospice to address the discrepancy between the numbers of people from ethnic minorities requesting help from the hospice compared to numbers of people in the hospice's catchment area from an ethnic minority.

The Culturally Sensitive Project aimed to change this by engaging more with ethnic minority communities to raise awareness of the services the Hospice can offer. The project has three main strands of work: raising awareness, education initiatives and improvements to existing services.

Raising awareness has included:

• monthly drop-in clinics at a range of religious venues and key GP surgeries
• a health fayre at Glasgow Central Mosque, attended by over 200 people
• presentations to community groups and in local Mosques and Gudwaras

These activities have helped to break down barriers to accessing hospice care and to inform people about the services and help the Hospice can offer. Training has also been provided for hospice staff and volunteers, local hospitals and other external organisations.

Changes were also made to services within the Hospice, for example the Hospice now has facilities for Ablution and prayer, culturally sensitive advice is available for staff, and all patient leaflets are available in Urdu, Punjabi and Hindi.

The Culturally Sensitive Project takes into account the needs of specific communities whilst raising awareness of the Hospice’s services. Most information and events have focused on the South Asian community to date but more recently work has begun to find ways to get information and assistance out to asylum seeker and refugee communities.

The project team has helped to significantly increase the number of referrals where a patient’s recorded ethnicity came under the wider South Asian category. This has enabled the Hospice to help and support individual families many of whom first learned about the services available at one of the drop-in clinics in the community. Without the clinics these families would not have received any support.

Finally, due to the Culturally Sensitive Project’s work the Hospice has seen an increase in the number of volunteers from different ethnic groups and this is helping to foster even stronger relationships with all the communities of South Glasgow.

Barbara Love and Majabeen Ali are key to the success of the project, with organisations now spontaneously requesting for Barbara and Majabeen to attend their events.

Barbara Love, Culturally Sensitive Project Lead and Clinical Nurse Specialist at The Prince & Princess of Wales Hospice has led the project from its inception. Her determination to make sure that everyone in Glasgow will have the same opportunity to get help from the Hospice means that she has become a very well-respected figure among local Asian communities.

Majabeen’s Ali, Cultural Liaison officer, has advised and guided the project on South Asian cultural issues and norms. A fluid Urdu and Punjabi speaker, Majabeen has been integral to the hospice's liaison with Glasgow’s South Asian Communities, and to the success of the Hospice’s awareness raising presentations and events. A well known figure in the South Asian community, Majabeen has helped to break down cultural barriers.

For more information about the Prince & Princess of Wales Hospice's Culturally Sensitive Project please contact Barbara Love or Majabeen Ali.