Palliative Care
Care for end of life
Specialist palliative care, tailored to your needs
Palliative care at home allows you to stay in the place you feel most comfortable, surrounded by memories and the people you love. With one-to-one support from a compassionate carer who is experienced in palliative care, you can have specialist support and symptom relief from serious illness, whenever it is needed.
Whether you are looking for a full-time live-in carer or intermittent visits from a local care team, we provide a full range of services for people living with illnesses, such as coping with cancer or nausea and vomiting. Our hospice and palliative care specialists follow the national palliative care guidelines. Our palliative care specialists cover all aspects of care including personal care, pain management for neurological a
To find out more about our palliative care service or how we can support you, please contact a member of our care specialist team. We’re here seven days a week to talk through your options and can arrange a meeting with a local care manager when you’re ready to begin your health and social care.
What is palliative care?
Palliative, or end of life care, is specialised medical care for people with serious or terminal illnesses such as a type of dementia or advanced cancer. The support focuses on providing relief from the symptoms, pain and stress of a serious illness – keeping you as comfortable as possible. The ultimate goal is to improve the quality of life for both the patient and their families and friends whilst reducing the emotional effects of illnesses.
Palliative care at home
While some receive palliative care at an inpatient hospice or residential nursing home, it is becoming an increasingly popular choice to get access to palliative care at home. Many individuals want to stay in an environment where they feel most comfortable as a way of managing emotional responses to their symptoms; it’s often referred to as hospice care at home.
Palliative care at home can involve:
- Personal care and assisted living such as assistance with bathing, dressing and toileting
- Continence care, whether it is changing continence pads or managing a stoma or catheter
- Medication support including prompts or administering medication, even the more complex prescriptions
- Support with pain management
- Help moving around the home, whether it is gentle support or hoisted transfers
- Assisted living through housekeeping duties such as vacuuming, dusting, changing beds or doing the laundry
- Preparing meals to your tastes, and washing up afterwards
- Caring for your pet including feeding and walking
- Running errands to collect prescriptions or food shopping
- Companionship and supporting your independent living at home
The options for palliative care at home
There are many options for palliative care in the home. Here at Augusta Homecare, our full range of home care services are regulated.
Unlike introductory agencies that offer palliative care, you will have a local care manager on-hand for if your symptoms change or if you need a response from your medical team. This fully-managed service offers you the extra reassurance that if your care requirements change, we can easily change the support to suit you.
The options for palliative care include:
Live-in care
Live-in care, also known as 24 hour care, places a specially trained live-in carer to provide support each day according to your requirements. Carefully chosen based on your personality and care needs, this carer will live with you at home supporting you with your day-to-day needs. Your carer will likely become a great friend or companion, helping to promote your independence and help you to get the most out of life with palliative care.
Read more about what live in care covers here.
Regular home visits
If you’d prefer support visits at specific times of the day – or overnight – your local Helping Hands branch will provide the right level of care for you. Our support service ranges from a half-an-hour visit each week all the way through to several visits a day or nightly support. One of our expertly trained carers can support you to stay independent at home, so that you and your loved ones have complete reassurance that you’re being supported with care that’s adapted to you.
Respite care
If your usual caregiver needs to take a break, we offer respite live-in care from as little as three days. We can step in quickly to support you with emergency care – whether you’ve been let down by your usual carer or they are taken ill – we’re here to help.
Benefits of palliative care at home
One of the main benefits of receiving palliative care at home is that it allows somebody to spend their last months, weeks, and days in the place where they feel most at ease and safe: their home. This places them in the company of someone they know and trust whilst receiving palliative care. As well as being reassuring for the person receiving care, knowing this can give peace of mind to families and close friends too. Because of this, palliative care and hospice care are often synonymous with each other.
Having care at home instead of a hospital or hospice means less disruption for everybody. Round-the-clock care means that any changes in condition will be noticed and responded to quickly.
You can also be reassured that the person providing care is assessed to high standards and given specific palliative care training, enabling them to provide practical and emotional support to you all.
How quickly can palliative carers be arranged?
With long-term illnesses, symptoms can change very quickly. The need to arrange palliative care can be very urgent, especially if someone’s in pain or distress.
We offer emergency home care and in many cases, we can begin arranging care within 24 hours of you getting in touch with us. This is especially useful if your situation doesn’t allow you to plan ahead. If you are currently in hospital or a residential setting, your local dedicated care manager can arrange support that will aid your move back home.
Please call us if you’d like to discuss the options. Our team is available seven days a week. In many instances, we can arrange for support to start within as little as 24 hours.
Who provides palliative care at home?
Our carers are expertly trained to have an understanding and working knowledge of palliative care.
We also place some of our carers under a training programme specially built around administering palliative and end-of-life practices. The carers that are put through this additional programme have had previous experience in working to deliver high-quality palliative care.