The limits of care: Border implementation at the end of life

In line with the UK's Charging to Overseas Visitors regulations (amended October 2017), any person not 'ordinarily resident' must pay for non-urgent care, inclusive of palliative services. Through 18 months of multi-sited ethnographic research, this project will address how palliative care service entitlement is framed, orchestrated and practiced; specifically asking, how end of life care is delivered to undocumented migrants identified to be in need of, but considered ineligible for, palliative care services on the NHS. This will primarily involve identifying and evaluating the care of patients who fit the research pool's profile over a number of sites provisionally identified as the boroughs of Camden, Wandsworth and Tower Hamlets, to build a portfolio of cases. In addition to this, two work placements within the Department of Health's Provider Efficiency & Productivity division and a Third Tier Social Entitlement Tribunal will be used to frame the portfolio. This study will, therefore, not only look at how Overseas Visitors Officers and Multi-disciplinary care teams within NHS hospitals orchestrate the care of terminally ill non-residents in line with UK regulations, but how these regulations are put together and ruled by law. This is a timely and much needed address of recently revised regulations and their consequences within care services.