King's College London

Around 90,000 people die in poverty each year in the UK. Better access to benefits for people living with a terminal illness can help to lift people out of poverty and improve dignity. We don’t know how many people living with a terminal illness miss out on benefits, but in the wider community, benefits often go unclaimed.

To improve benefit take-up for people living with terminal illness, we need: information on how many terminally ill people take up the benefits available to them; and an understanding of the experience of making a claim, and interventions that could improve take-up, especially for groups most at risk of under-claiming.

This research involves:

Analysis of existing data to investigate the take-up of benefits among people living with a terminal illness.

Interviews with patients and family members, and focus groups with healthcare professionals to understand the barriers and facilitators to claiming benefits.

A review of existing benefit take-up initiatives to understand what is already being done to support people living with a terminal illness.

The development of guidance for healthcare professionals to support patients to make benefit claims, and to make policy recommendations for increasing benefit take-up for people living with terminal illness.