Palliative care strategy - service mapping survey: main findings report

1. Introduction

The Scottish Government’s Palliative Care Strategy (2025-2030) is evidence informed and at the outset, the Strategy Steering Group agreed on a need for:

• mapping of current service provision for ‘general’ palliative care across sectors and places of care including primary care, social care, care homes, and acute hospitals both in-hours and out-of-hours; and
• mapping of specialist palliative care services for adults and for children both NHS and third sector; and
• gathering information on best practice models/examples to build and spread.

The Strategy Clinical and Practice Advisory Group designed and distributed four complementary surveys to determine how general palliative care provision and specialist palliative care services at a Health Board level or wider are addressing the needs of patients, their families and carers. Surveys were sent to 39 Adult Specialist Palliative Care Services and a range of Paediatric Palliative Care Services across Scotland (89 invitations)^[1]. All 31 Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs), NHS Boards (14) and special Health Boards (7) were invited to take part. The surveys were completed online sequentially between June and December 2023 (see Annex A for more information).

In total, 85 responses were received across the four surveys, with response rates shown in brackets below:

• 38 from Adult Specialist Services (97%)
• 16 from Paediatric Services (18%)
• 22 from Health and Social Care Partnerships (71%)
• 9 from Health Boards (43%)

While individual surveys did not receive complete response rates, information across surveys covered all Health Board areas to provide insight into services in Scotland. This report covers the main findings from all four surveys presented thematically.