ABSTRACT
Help the Hospices' User Involvement Initiative takes the form of a group of palliative care service users who take the lead in supporting the development of user involvement at national and local level. People with life-limiting conditions will want to know how the hospice movement will meet their needs in relation to becoming part of involvement and participation, and what information and training they will receive in order to do the job. There are different degrees of user involvement across hospices nationally. No service users are involved in local hospice. Hospices need to be influenced by patients. They need to take consideration of what patients want. Karen Willman, a founding member of the Help the Hospices' User Involvement Initiative, died in 2007. She was involved in planning the very first national conference on user involvement in palliative care in 1999 and played a key role in developing user involvement in this field as a service user.
