Palliative care
Palliative care is provided by health and social care professionals to people of all ages living and dying with any advanced or progressive health condition. Palliative care focuses on quality of life for the person, their family and others who are close to them at every stage of their illness journey from diagnosis through death and bereavement.
Palliative care prevents and relieves suffering through the early identification, correct assessment and holistic management of pain, other symptoms and wider aspects of care, including mental health, and social and spiritual problems.
General palliative care is provided by clinicians and other staff across health and social care for the people they look after with palliative care needs, alongside giving other treatments and care. It includes care around death for those who are dying at home, in care homes, or in hospitals.
Specialist palliative care is provided by specially trained, multi-professional palliative care teams for people living in the community and in care homes, and patients in hospitals and in hospices. Specialist palliative care has a particular role in providing support, advice and education to the rest of the health and care system.
Palliative care strategy
We published the Palliative Care Matters for All: palliative care strategy 2025 to 2030 in September 2025. This replaces our previous Palliative and end of life care: strategic framework for action 2016 – 2021 (published December 2015).
Our strategy will help to ensure that people of all ages with life shortening conditions, their families and carers should receive the right care and support, in the right place, at the right time, and from the right people.
The strategy was informed through engagement with key stakeholders, including health boards, Health and Social Care Partnerships, primary care, care homes, unscheduled care services, hospital services, third sector organisations and those with lived experience. It is intended for the entire palliative care community.
Strategy delivery
Alongside the strategy, we published an initial delivery plan 2025 to 2028, setting out how we will work with those who plan and deliver palliative care in Scotland. This means that everyone – regardless of age, diagnosis, or location – has access to timely, high quality and person-centred palliative care.
We will set up a Palliative Care Delivery Group to support delivery, monitor progress against agreed timelines and oversee reporting.
We convened a Strategy Steering Group to oversee the strategy’s development and finalisation. More information on the development of the strategy can be found at the group's aims, priniciples, priorities and approach. This group has now completed its work and is no longer active.
Delegated functions
Palliative and end of life care is a delegated function of Integration Authorities.
- an Integration Authority can be a local authority, a health board or an integration joint board, according to the model of integration adopted. It covers both models of integration whether body corporate ( IJB) or lead agency
- an Integration Joint Board is the decision making and governance body for all delegated functions, services and budgets, identified in individual integration schemes. It is a statutory body, constituting a separate legal entity to local authorities and health boards
- a Health and Social Care Partnership is led by a Chief Officer and is the operational and delivery aspect of integration, bringing together staff from the relevant health board and local authority
We published guidance to support Health and Social Care Partnerships with the development of their Strategic Commissioning plans in relation to palliative and end of life care services in May 2018.