New strategy for palliative care for children - Better Care: Better Lives
Better Care: Better Lives, a new government initiative for improving the care and support given to children in England with life-limiting or life-threatening condition and their families.
Ministers say today services for dying children in England will be transformed by the first-ever palliative care strategy with the sector receiving £10m a year funding for two years from 2009 - a £1m rise on the £9m they currently receive.
Ministers want to see families given access to 24-hour community teams and they have called on councils and the NHS to work together to improve and expand services.
There are more than 20,000 children and young people in the country requiring specialist care because of either life-threatening diseases, such as cancer, or life-limiting degenerative disorders. Most palliative care services are provided by charities. They receive about a fifth of their funding from government - the rest from donations.
An inquiry last year, commissioned by the Government found that parents were left frustrated and exhausted by the current 'patchy' system.
Families of terminally-ill children had to fight for support and often fell through the gap between social services and the NHS, said the report.
Parents should be given a choice of where their children were cared for and it called for an expansion of community teams, of nurses and palliative care specialists.
Care services minister Ivan Lewis said, "Everything is in place for us to start transforming these vital services. There is much to do and we must not fail the families who live with these challenging situations every day of their lives."
ACT - The Association for Children's Palliative Care has welcomed the news http://www.act.org.uk/content/view/117/1/
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