Information for healthcare professionals

A key area of focus over the last year has been to improve the support we provide to young people transitioning from our care into adult services. Our transition expert, with the support
of our young people and their families, has designed ‘My Transition’, an interactive, live communication tool that ensures all aspects of a young person’s medical, educational, legal
and social care needs are considered when entering adult services. It has been successfully piloted with great feedback and has now been introduced to all our young people entering transition under our care.

We know that working collaboratively with a wide range of clinical and academic services, both locally and nationally, including government, NHS, statutory, education and voluntary agencies, is crucial to providing the best possible care to children with life-limiting conditions and their families. One example of this is our on-call rota, which ensures a children’s palliative care nurse is available to provide medical support for an end-of-life child either over the phone, in the family home or in hospital, no matter the time of day. We work with 13 Community Nursing teams in our catchment area to fulfil this service. We are also working closely with NICU units, sharing our expertise. Our perinatal palliative care Clinical
Nurse Specialist, attends ward rounds each week at three NICU’s and identifies babies who could benefit from the services we provide, facilitates referrals and supports NICU teams with symptom management and Advance Care Planning. She also works with a number of local neonatal units, where we support families’ holistic well-being thanks to a partnership with St Peter’s Hospital, which sees us providing specialist bereavement support.

We are working with local healthcare professionals to share knowledge and skills in the foundations of paediatric care, end-of-life care and symptom management. An example of this is our educational courses created in collaboration with the Surrey and south-west London Paediatric Palliative Care Area Network (SPAN) for health and social care practitioners with experience of, or an interest in, paediatric palliative care. With face-to-face, virtual and webinar options, the training focuses on a mix of topics to provide a diverse and robust programme. We’ve also co-designed and co-delivered a week-long innovative virtual e-learning placement with Kingston University, the first collaboration of its kind in the UK. The project, which is giving student nurses a better understanding of what children’s hospices do, was so successful it led to a nomination for Student Nursing
Times award.