"It's not really like a hospice": spaces of self-help and community care for cancer

This chapter will discuss the ways in which the material features of a community hospice day care setting influence the approach to caring for cancer patients and those who have been bereaved to cancer who make use of a ‘drop-in’ service it offers. It makes an important contribution to understanding the everyday spaces of terminal illness and the performance of care for the dying, and has significant policy implications. The chapter draws on recently completed participant observation research to offer a critique of professionalised and medicalised hospice settings that have become the institutionalised home of palliative care. In particular, the chapter will argue that the culture and practice of care for those with life-threatening illness is, in part, a function of the ‘culture’ and aesthetic of the built environment itself. For example, some day care, housed in ‘non-dedicated’ settings, is much more likely to be characterised by a ‘make do and mend’ operational approach that directly influences both who cares and the components of care