Haringey integrated palliative care service

The Haringey palliative care team is an innovatively integrated community service provided jointly by all local specialists: North Middlesex Hospital (lead provider), North London Hospice  (main point of contact), St Joseph’s Hospice, Marie Curie Hospice Hampstead and Whittington Health. By all of us working closely and professionally together we are able to ensure that patient care is consistent, be it in hospital, at home or in a nursing home or hospice, and that information about what is important to each patient gets passed on between those different settings.

Where appropriate and wished we will also include family or friends and local voluntary services or trained volunteers (e.g. in our bereavement service) in setting up a plan that works for each patient as an individual, as described in the national framework "Ambitions for Palliative and End of Life Care".

The Haringey palliative care team operates seven days a week and is available 24 hours for patients in the community:

• The service is provided 7 days a week, 9am–5pm; during out of hours we offer telephone advice support (see numbers below) and visiting service is between 9am-5pm.
• Out of hours telephone advice service operating 5pm–9am, seven days a week for advice to professionals and to patients (or their relatives) currently receiving care from the community palliative care team.
• We provide a single point of access for patients, families and GPs: there is a dedicated phone and email system for enquiries and referrals, staffed by the triage team at North London Hospice, Monday - Friday, 9am–5pm

Services we offer

We offer specialist advice for managing pain and other symptoms, such as nausea, vomiting and fatigue, and provide social, spiritual and emotional support. This is provided by palliative care clinical nurse specialists, a palliative care consultant, a specialist social worker and a bereavement counseling team. We work closely with a range of healthcare professionals including GPs, district nurses, social workers and the local hospices, and also physiotherapists, occupational therapistsdietitians.  In the early stages of illness, we are working alongside medical care and therapeutic support to improve quality of life. For patients reaching the end of life, our aim is to enable them to die in comfort, with dignity and in the surroundings of their choice. We are committed to caring for these patients, and the people important to them, with compassion and in a manner which is respectful of their expressed wishes. This is in line with national guidance “One Chance to Get it Right” published by the Leadership Alliance for the Care of Dying People in June 2014.

We can also offer a new bereavement support and counseling service for families and carers of patients who were Haringey residents and died from a progressive illness. Referrals can be made to the bereavement service by any member of the wider palliative care service.  We hope to expand the bereavement service in the future to include all Haringey residents who need bereavement support.

We also provide a directory of services available for patients with advanced diseases in Haringey, which includes contact details for both NHS and voluntary services. This information is available on the North London Hospice website , under information for families.