About the Marie Curie Delivering Choice Programme

Research in recent years shows that most people in the UK would choose to die at home if they had a terminal illness. In reality, only one

in five people are able to do so.

The Marie Curie Delivering Choice Programme aims to double the number of people with a terminal illness who are cared for and spend their final days at home.

Since its inception, the programme has helped push palliative care up the political agenda. Our charity has fed into the government’s End of Life Care Strategy for England and Lord Darzi’s NHS Next Stage Review, both published in 2008.

What do we want to achieve?

Our vision is to help local providers and commissioners of care to develop the best possible local services for palliative care patients, regardless of diagnosis, so that they are cared for in the place of their choice.

Our programme works with the NHS and social services, as well as the voluntary and independent sectors to develop patient-centred, 24-hour services that meet local needs and ensure:

• “If I could wave a magic wand, I would just go home.”

  Patient in Lincolnshire

  the best possible care for palliative care patients
• equity of access to services
• appropriate support services for patients and their carers
• choice of place of care and death is available to all
• improvements in coordination of care among stakeholders

What are the benefits?

• By improving care services in the community, our programme provides patients with genuine choice in place of care and death.
• When more patients are being cared for at home, this reduces the level of treatment and deaths in hospital, reducing strain on acute services.
• Our research suggests that better care can be delivered at no extra cost to the NHS.
• We are also evaluating the impact of providing more care at home than in hospital in our programme and are sharing our learning with health and social care providers across the UK.

How our programme works

To demonstrate how our programme can help support patient choice and improve care, we established our first project in Lincolnshire in October 2004. We now have now funded and managed six other projects in Tayside (Scotland), Leeds, Barnet (north London), south-east London, Somerset and Northumberland, Tyne and Wear.

Our projects are chosen to provide a variety of geographic, political and demographic conditions. As all sites are different, this diverse mix provides valuable insights and experience into how we can improve care services in a particular area.

Results from our first project in Lincolnshire are very promising. An evaluation published by the King’s Fund in 2008 showed that, by improving community care, not only can better patient outcomes be achieved, but the cost can be the same. Most importantly, the evaluation showed that deaths at home for patients have more than doubled.

To allow us to share our experience and knowledge of palliative and end of life care, we are now offering care providers our electronic toolkit and expert adviser service to help them deliver a local project independently.

Click here to download the programme overview (pdf, 464KB)

Related links

>>Our methodology
>>Sustainable solutions for every locality