“We pride ourselves in providing the very best clinical care to the families we support. This can only be achieved and maintained by ensuring we continue to review and adapt our services. By listening to the voices of those we support, building on existing partnerships and establishing new ones, and investing in our incredible team, we aim to be the very best we can.”
Information for healthcare professionals
Lisa, Director of Care
How we're improving our services
Improving our care for young adults
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.
Increased collaboration
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.
Sharing our expertise
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.
Our services
See the range of services we offer to children with life-limiting conditions, and their families.
Partnership working
We work with a wide range of partners in the NHS, local government and academia.
Research
We’re a research active hospice with a continual focus on developing evidence based practice.
Student placements
We offer placements for students studying nursing, and have partnerships with several universities.
Professional courses and open days
We run open days for professionals, and regular courses on areas of palliative care.
Specialist Bereavement Service
About our new service
Our specialist bereavement service is now available to families whose children were not supported by us prior to death. It includes a personalised pathway of support for three years and three months following the child’s death.
Support for sudden and unexpected deaths
As part of our new service, we provide specialist care to families of babies or children who have died suddenly. This might be from an unexpected illness or a death that cannot be explained (subject to some exclusions). This starts by assigning a dedicated Family Support Worker to the family.
How we're making a difference
more families accessed our bereavement support in 2023/24 thanks to the expansion of our services (increase on 2022/23)
Healthcare bodies we have established partnerships with in the last year.
Neonate babies cared for in the last year (July 2023 to June 2024)
New referrals were accepted in 2023/24 (a 45% increase on 2022/23)