ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on several aspects of planning that both social work and palliative care contribute to end-of-life care. It examines some of the implications of using Advance care planning (ACP) in practice. The chapter explores a movement away in recent years from a focus in ACP on documentation of patients’ advance decisions to refuse treatment and legal protection for medical decision-making in end-of-life situations towards a broader engagement of people with long-term conditions, their families and informal caregivers in decisions throughout their care careers. The importance of ACP in end-of-life care means that its role in care for long-term conditions and for older people has developed, and social workers need to develop a practice strategy to originate ACP in an older person’s care career. An important source of ACP is how palliative care services approach decision-making where patients are known to have an illness that has reached an advanced stage that will lead to death.
