Working with others

The Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) Health and Wellbeing Alliance is a partnership between voluntary sector organisations and the health and care system in England.

Its role is to:

• Provide a co-ordinated route for health and care organisations to reach a wide range of VCSE organisations
• Support collaboration between VCSE organisations and provide a collective voice for issues related to VCSE partnerships in health and care
• Enable health and care organisations and VCSE organisations to jointly improve ways of delivering services which are accessible to everyone. By making it easier for all communities to access services this will reduce health inequalities
• Ensure health and care decision-makers hear the views of communities which experience the greatest health inequalities.
• Bring the expertise of the VCSE sector and communities they work with into national policy making.

The Alliance is jointly managed by the Department of Health & Social Care, NHS England & NHS Improvement, and Public Health England.

Hospice UK is part of the Palliative and End of Life Care Consortium within the Alliance, alongside Marie Curie, the National Bereavement Alliance and Together for Short Lives.

Together, we represent voluntary and community sector providers and infrastructure organisations working in death, dying, bereavement, palliative and end of life care, as well as children and adults with lived experience of death, dying and bereavement.

We work in partnership with hospices in Wales under the banner of Hospices Cymru to collectively advance hospice care and enable better care for more people in Wales.

Our work includes positioning hospices as part of the solutions to a range of health and care challenges and working constructively with the Welsh Government to represent people who need palliative and end of life care.

Hospices Cymru is Chaired by Liz Booyse, Chief Executive at City Hospice in Cardiff.

We work in close partnership with hospices in Scotland and with the Scottish Hospice Leadership Group (SHLG). The SHLG is a collaboration of hospice leaders in Scotland working together to maximise the potential for hospices to contribute to the quality of palliative and end of life care.

The Scottish Hospice Leadership Group is chaired by Jacki Smart, Chief Executive of ACCORD Hospice.

We are a member of, and work closely with, the Scottish Partnership of Palliative Care (SPPC). The SPPC brings together health and social care professionals from hospitals, social care services, primary care, hospices and other charities, to find ways of improving people’s experiences of declining health, death, dying and bereavement in Scotland.