A collaboration of  colleagues from CHFT ,Overgate Hospice and Calderdale Council has been shortlisted for  local "Oscars"  aka the  Accolade Award for their work with Calderdale Council of Mosques centred on the South Asian community in West Halifax.

Their work has had a special focus on the Madni Mosque in particular. One of our Muslim chaplains Zeenat Hussain undertook scoping work in the community to investigate reasons for the low uptake of Palliative Care Services.

This led to the creation of the Horizon Group, comprising Zeenat and our chaplain George Spencer, Andrea Vickerman and Gillian Sykes, CHFT End of Life Care Training Lead/Facilitator, Karen Hagreen Clinical Educator in End of Life Care Overgate Hospice and Sail Suleman The Cohesion and Equality Officer, Calderdale Council.

The partnership established a programme of education, which is still running. The learning is two-way, explaining concepts of palliation and strategies of care to the community, and learning of possible ethical, cultural and religious concerns from the community.

The Accolade Awards are considered to be the Oscars of the Adult Social Care world and the project comes in the ‘Most Effective Approach to Integrated New Models of Care’ category.

Seminars at the Mosque have included medical and nursing practitioners from CHFT and Overgate Hospice, as well as representatives of Calderdale Register Office and CHFT Mortuaries staff. There have now been two study days at the Madni Mosque, which have been well-attended as well as networked on the community radio. A result of the work, there is an increased use of palliative care services by South Asian patients and their families.

The session for women on the morning of 27th September was particularly well-received and a typical comment on the feedback sheets was, “When is the next event?

Please have more of these, we women are left out”. The session was made part of the formal training programme for Muslim women at the Mosque.

George Spencer, co-ordinating chaplain and member of the Horizon Group,  said: "It is great to have such recognition for the work. What we have really stressed is that the learning goes both ways. We needed to find out what the perceived barriers were to the uptake of services as well as making sure the information practitioners wanted to put across was thoroughly understood. And we are really grateful to our friends at the Madni Mosque for making us so welcome and helping the days run smoothly.”

Winners will be announced at the annual gala event in London on Thursday, 1st March, 2018.