It was back in September ’21 when I wrote here about why we set up the My Future Care Buddy Service. By then we were in the midst of a pilot and were busy collecting data from the 35 people who eventually completed the programme.
Supporting people to create an action plan around later life planning and then helping them to see it through is not a quick process but it IS extremely rewarding. It was exciting to see some of those lightbulb moments when, for example, people realised that thinking about the future is not just about them but can also remove a major cause of stress for their family. We heard how the My Future Care Handbook helps take the heat out of a conversation about the future because it makes it feel like the obvious thing to do. And as the statistics started to come together we saw not only that people we were supporting felt better informed and had created some key documents, but their sense of wellbeing had improved as well.
The key findings are below. If you’d like to see the full report please email us.
- The percentage of people…
- feeling well or quite well informed about the decisions available to them regarding later and end of life care increased from 50% to 88%.
- who felt well or reasonably well prepared for later life and end of life care increased from 30% to 100%.
- who rated their quality of life as good or very good increased from 64% to 75%.
- who rated their quality of life as fair or poor reduced from 36% to 25%.
- who had had a full discussion with the person / people closest to them increased from 18% to 86%.
- who felt it was very important to document decisions about later and end of life increased from 65% to 88%.
- People’s mental wellbeing score improved from 48 to 77 (max 105).
- Across 8 documents, the average percentage of documents that people had in place increased from 34% to 67%.
- 100% of participants said they found the service to be very useful.
- 100% of participants said they found four sessions to be about right (not all used all four sessions but were grateful it was there if needed.)
On the strength of those results we have now secured funding to deliver the service free to individuals and organisations in the south east and in slightly more restricted circumstances in other parts of the UK.
Whether you are an individual seeking support to make some plans for later life, or an organisation wishing to secure Handbooks and support for your members / patients / clients click here or email us further information.
For the dates of the next online group sessions, click here.
