We’re pleased and proud to say that Talking for England: A guide to help you with planning ahead is now available on our website for you to access online or print at home for free.

Written and designed by our Office Manager, Joseph, the aim of the guide is to get people ‘talking for England’ about what is most important to them, and how that can be incorporated into how they’re looked after in the future.

‘When I speak with people both within Teign Angels and to others as well, I tend to find that the general understanding of “advance care planning” is limited to medical decisions. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with only planning for medical decisions, if that’s what is important to us.

‘But in social care, we want to know about other bits as well. What’s important to a person’s identity? Do they like their hair styled or natural? Do they prefer to wear baggy clothes or tighter-fitting clothes? What do they enjoy eating?

‘All of this is incredibly useful for us when we’re building our care and support plans. But I find a lot of people don’t realise that this can all be a part of advance care planning, as well as so much more’ said Joseph.

Talking for England is a DIY, pick-as-you-go guide to advance care planning. It contains thought-pieces, information, and puzzles and games you can put together at home, to help you talk about what’s important to you with the people who matter most to you. It includes sections on food, spirituality, identities, clothing, music, and emergency planning.

‘Advance care planning is a tool we can use to talk about what, who, and where is most important to us, and how we can maintain those relationships should we become very unwell, or lose the ability and capacity to maintain those relationships independently.

‘The guide is designed to be something you can put down and jump straight back into. So whether you want to do your planning in one go, or across a few days, over a few months, or even years, you can do. We’re all constantly changing as people, and our plans can change with us.

‘Advance care planning can be done by anyone over the age of 18 who has the mental capacity to make the decisions they’re making. Not having capacity doesn’t mean you can’t be involved in planning for the future – it just means you might need a bit of help to do so’.

Go to www.teignangels.co.uk/greenhouse/acp-hub/ to download our Talking for England guide.