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£20m funding provided to improve children's palliative care

19/02/2008

The government has provided £20 million of extra funding to improve care for terminally-ill children and those with life-limiting conditions.

Care services minister Ivan Lewis announced the funding alongside a new framework to improve local palliative care services.

The strategy is designed to ensure sick children can be cared for and die in their choice of setting, whether at home or in a hospice.

"This is about a service-wide push to drive up quality and standards, which relies on getting everything - personalised services, commissioning frameworks, the right capacity - to work together to achieve the best possible outcomes for parents and children," Mr Lewis said.

"'Better Care: Better Lives' calls on local commissioners, providers and regulators to devise local strategies to enable every child and young person with a life-limiting or life-threatening condition to have access to high-quality, family centred, sustainable care and support with services provided in a setting of choice according to the child's and family's wishes."

The strategy will ensure that all children have 24-hour access to multidisciplinary community teams and, when needed, specialist palliative care advice and services.

It will also seek to create a successful transition between children's and adult services to ensure that transition for life-limited young people to adult services is a planned and purposeful process.

Barbara Gelb, chief executive of the Association of Children's Hospices, described today's announcement as "tremendous news for children's hospice services and life-limited children".

"The £20 million gives children's hospice services a further two years' breathing space to engage with local health and social care commissioners to gain secure, long-term funding," she added.

"And the overall strategy offers commissioners a first-rate route map to give life-limited children and their families the full range of services they need."