The Marie Curie Delivering Choice Programme launched in 2004 with the aim of doubling the number of people who can die at home.

Our aim is to develop and help provide the best possible services for terminally ill patients, allowing them to be cared for in the place of their choice.

Marie Curie Cancer Care believes that the right to a good death is fundamental. Central to this is the right for patients to choose their place of care and death.

Research commissioned by Marie Curie Cancer Care shows that 64 per cent of people would choose to die at home. In reality only 25 per cent achieve this.

In 2004 Marie Curie Cancer Care initiated the Marie Curie Delivering Choice Programme, with the single overriding objective of providing services which enable the patient to make a free and informed choice regarding their place of treatment and death.

The programme aims to achieve this through improved planning, coordination and uptake of existing local services, working in partnership with local organisations to apply best practice health and social care.

The Marie Curie Delivering Choice Programme seeks to make care in the community a genuine option, reducing the level of treatment and death in hospital, and replacing it with increased levels of care in the community.

The programme has five projects underway – in Lincolnshire, Tayside (Scotland), Leeds, Barnet (north London) and south-east London. Two further projects are scheduled to launch in Somerset and Tyneside in 2008.

Each project works to achieve three key objectives:

• Develop patient-focused 24-hour service models that serve the local needs


• Evaluate the economic impact upon healthcare services of more patients receiving palliative care at home as compared to hospitals


• Disseminate programme findings to other health and social care providers that enabling the replication of solutions across the UK.

In order to achieve these aims, Marie Curie Cancer Care is working in partnership with local health and social care providers across the public and voluntary sectors to design long-term sustainable solutions that serve local needs in each project area.

For more information on the project please log onto www.deliveringchoiceprogramme.org.uk