All palliative care teams and organisations can apply for a Greener Palliative Care Award, whether within the NHS or charitable organisations (e.g. hospices).
The award provides a framework for progress in environmental sustainability. It uses existing experience and the available evidence to help drive forward environmentally sustainable practices, by showing a clear path towards progress in an area that can be difficult to approach.
Clear, achievable standards are set out for each level. Supporting resources and examples are given, to help applicants work towards the levels. Actions also link to national work, such as within Greener NHS and the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare.
The award works alongside other key organisational changes such as developing and delivering on Green Plans, while offering actions that interested people from all professional groups (and volunteers) can work on.
Express your interest by filling in this form
One of the Greener Palliative Care Award team will then be in touch to guide you through next steps.
Initially we are recruiting 10 sites from within the UK and Ireland. During our initial pilot phase we are unfortunately not able to accept submissions from other countries, but please get in touch if you would be interested in this.
Please do get in touch by email to pallcaresusnet@gmail.com with any queries or to join our team.
Why would I/my team want to do this?
Hopefully because you are all motivated to reduce your team’s environmental impact! But there are other clear benefits too. Increasingly there is a regulatory need to show work on environmentally sustainable healthcare is being done – for example the new CQC standard. Commissioned services will need to show evidence they are engaged with sustainability work, and for those in charitable settings our members have found funders may ask questions on this topic.
We also know it’s a positive step for teams to work on together, improving team cohesion and job satisfaction as you all make positive changes.
FAQ’s
I’m interested – what’s the first step?
Contact us to let us know your like to learn more, using the form above. We’ll ask you to sign up to our Palliative Care Sustainability Network page to ensure you are connected to others doing the same thing.
How is a level achieved?
You don’t have to do everything all at once! As you complete each action, complete the relevant part of the submission form (you will receive this when you sign up) and send us the evidence. Once you have submitted evidence for each standard, we’ll be in touch with any further questions – and to grant you your first award.
There is no time limit on how long you can take to apply for your first level. We have designed the levels with the aim that each is achievable within a year.
At present there is no cost for this.
What evidence do you need to see?
Evidence varies depending on the standard, but is likely to include minutes of meetings, project reports, and data showing reductions in environmental impact. We will guide you as to what will be accepted.
How is the Award scheme organised and run?
You can see our governance details here, as well as details of our partner organisations. We have a multi-professional group who oversee the development of the award scheme, and an assessment group who review evidence submitted and decide when to award a Greener Palliative Care level. You can see details of the people on our groups here.
What happens after we have achieved the level?
You will keep the award for three years. If you choose to, within that time you can apply for the next level up!
After 3 years you will need to provide evidence to show you are still working on the standards at the level you obtained – or hopefully you will be ready to move up.
Gold awards will also need to show progress by submitting evidence of ongoing actions every 3 years.
I’m not sure which level to start at?
Our structure shows you which actions are needed at each level, and gives some examples to get you going. We’ll share the full structure once you express an interest.
As a rough idea, if your team haven’t done any work on this area before, start at ‘bronze‘ where the focus is on getting together, education, awareness raising and identifying the first areas to tackle.
Silver is if you already have a good awareness, with an environmental group set up, and will help you to broaden your focus and provide evidence.
Gold will ensure your changes are embedded in the organisation and you are striving to continue to make year on year progress.
We might add a platinum level one day!