Partnership and collaboration is key to meeting demand for children’s hospice care
Children’s hospices have evolved to meet the changing needs of children, but need among children and families is growing while service provision is scaling back due to the challenges in commissioning and funding. True partnerships and collaboration are key in breaking down barriers to enable needs-led, responsive and effective nursing care.
Demand for children’s palliative care is growing, but service provision is struggling. Integrated services can provide needs-led and responsive nursing care
In the 1980s the first children’s hospices positioned themselves as providing ‘service, friendship and listening ears’, caring for babies, children, young people and their families, and alongside, but not replacing ‘good hospital or community care’.
Modern children’s hospice care looks very different to the care offered by the founding nurses, Sister Frances Dominica at Helen and Douglas House in Oxford, and Lenore Hill at Martin House in Yorkshire. But the heart of hospice care remains the same – valuing therapeutic relationships and delivering care that is flexible, child focused and truly family centred.
It will not surprise you to hear that the needs of babies, children and young people with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions have changed over the past 40 years.
What does the future for children’s hospices look like?
Children are living longer, with more complexity and technology dependence than ever before.
‘True partnerships and collaboration are key in breaking down barriers to enable needs-led, responsive and effective care’
Children’s hospices have evolved to meet the changing needs of children, in the context of the ever-changing health and social care across the UK. The question is, what does the future for children’s hospices look like? How do we remain relevant yet preserve those aspects of care that children’s hospices were built on?
The current climate in children’s palliative care is paradoxical. Need among children and families is growing, but service provision is scaling back due to huge challenges in commissioning and funding.
So how do we realign the two in the specialty?
We need to embrace our positions in integrated care systems, mixing care pathways with resources, learning and solutions, to continue to develop our service provision in line with need. True partnerships and collaboration are key in breaking down barriers to enable needs-led, responsive and effective care.
A wise woman once said: ‘If the door is locked, go through the window.' Now we need to unlock the doors.
Further information
Hill L (1994) Caring for Dying Children and their Families. Nelson Thornes Ltd
Michael Tatterton, consultant editor, Nursing Children and Young People; and Eve Holroyd, care services director, Bluebell Wood Children's Hospice, Sheffield
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