Our Mission & Direction

Mission

"Promoting palliative care for all who need it"

NCPC aims to:

• Identify and develop policy proposals which enable improved palliative care and wider access to it


• Influence the policies of the Governments of England, Wales and Northern Ireland to this end


• Identify good clinical and management practice and disseminate this widely.

Our strategy is:

• To promote improvement in the quality and availability of palliative care to patients their families and carers

We achieve this through:

• Providing a forum in which palliative care service commissioners, providers and users can exchange views and identify needs and possible solutions
  
  
• Providing unique statistics on palliative care through Minimum Data Sets analysis based on voluntary sector and NHS activity
  
  
• Offering diagnostic services with advice on needs assessment, development of palliative care strategies and developing and evaluating service delivery plans
  
  
• Producing practical guidance through events and publications, and working closely with others to ensure the widest possible dissemination of knowledge and experience

We ensure necessary policy development and research is carried out by:

• Drawing on our membership, collaborating with others and accessing their accumulated experience and knowledge to help us formulate and validate our proposals through the work of our policy groups and committees
  
  
• Focusing our efforts on those areas of policy or practice where there is greatest need and ensuring all proposals are evidence-based
  
  
• Campaigning to ensure statutory investment is sufficient to implement national policy
  
  
• Maintaining a lead role in the End of Life Care Strategy Board and supporting and advising the All Party Parliamentary Hospice & Palliative Care Group

Direction

The palliative care context within which NCPC works has changed in recent years and it was agreed in 2004 that we should reconsider our objectives and activities within this new context. In particular, the creation of Networks, the establishment of the National Partnership Group for England and the almost universal agreement that there was a need to make progress on extending good palliative care for patients with life limiting conditions other than cancer all had implications for what we should be doing and for our future direction.

Older structures and other arrangements were not best suited for our wider agenda and our overall role and structure required some changes to enable us to deliver our priorities in the changed context for palliative care. In 2004 there were a series of discussions with the Trustees and other stakeholders on these changes. We received feedback from subscribers, member organisations and other stakeholders, and following this, the National Council for Hospice & Specialist Palliative Care Services formally changed its Constitution on September 21st 2004. Following those changes, we officially became The National Council for Palliative Care (NCPC) on November 3rd 2004.