How to use this website

Who and what is the website for?

This website was set up to share information about end of life care for adults in England. Its focus is on data, statistics, research and evidence, which have a vital role in improving end of life care services. Most of the information provided is for professionals, especially researchers and those who have to make decisions about policy or end of life care services, but anyone can use it and we hope that many people do. If you would like to know more about the development of the website and what the National End of Life Care Intelligence Network does, please see About us.

Some of the information may be a little difficult to understand at first, especially if you are not familiar with using data and statistics. To help, we have written a short End of Life Care Profiles User Guide.

How this website is organised

There are four main areas on this website. Click on each of the links below to read more about what you will find there:

1. End of Life Care Profiles

2. Resources

3. Data sources

4. Advice and information

End of Life Care Profiles

These were developed for the National End of Life Care Intelligence Network by PHE's Knowledge and Intelligence Team (South West), the lead for end of life care in England.

PHE's Health and Intelligence Team specialise in analysing data to improve our understanding of health nationally, regionally and locally. They are expert at finding ways to compare health across different geographical areas.

The End of Life Care Profiles is a tool that was developed so that we can compare key end of life statistics from one Local Authority area in England to another. For example, the tool can tell us how many people die in each Local Authority, the age at which they die, how many were men and how many women. It can also tell us how they die (causes of death) and where they die (hospital, at home, nursing home etc.).

If you are not familiar with them, using the Profiles can take a little getting used to. The short End of Life Care Profiles User Guide will hopefully help you work your way around the tool.  

Please let us know if you have any difficulties using or interpreting the Profiles by emailing neolcin at phe dot gov.uk link [email protected] .

For those who are perhaps more familiar with using statistical tools, each one comes with a metadata guide, which gives information about where the data has come from, what its limitations are and any calculations that have been performed on the data before it is presented.

To start using the End of Life Care Profiles tool, go the End of Life Care Profiles page.

Resources

Another aim of this website is to provide links to useful information found elsewhere on the Internet. So far, we have included links to useful Publications, Research and Links to useful organisations.  We will be adding to the Resources as the website develops.

The National End of Life Care Intelligence Network also commissions its own publications. These are free to download from the Publications page.

Data sources

For anyone doing research in the field of end of life care, it is very useful to know where to go to find data and statistics that can be trusted. The data sources section provides a comprehensive guide to where to find information on topics such as carers, dementia, hospital care, social care, sudden death etc. We will keep adding to these topics as the website develops and new Data sources become available.

Just click on the topic link on the data sources page and you will see a table describing the available data sources for that topic and where to find them on the Internet.

If you have any suggestions for data sources that we can add, please let us know by contacting neolcin at phe dot gov.uk link [email protected] .

Advice and information

If you are a patient, carer or concerned friend or relative, you may have questions about what end of life care services are available or what help you are entitled to receive, whether financial or in terms of support and care. This area of the website gives lists of organisations that are expert in answering questions of this kind and provides links to their websites. We hope that you find this information useful. Please let us know if there are other organisations that we could add to this list or if there is other information that you would like to see on this page. You can email us at neolcin at phe dot gov.uk link [email protected] .

Sign-up for our e-alert if you would like to keep up to date with new additions to the site.