Children's Hospice South West: Specialised care for families in the South West

I want to tell you about the specialist palliative care and support our care teams provide to children, young people and their families across the South West region at our hospices: Little Bridge House, Charlton Farm and Little Harbour.

Each of our hospices provides individualised care and support to babies, children and young people up to the age of 18 years old who have a life-limiting or a life-threatening condition or disease.

Referrals into the hospices are made by family members, consultants, community nursing teams, specialist nurses, GPs and other professionals.

From referral acceptance our care teams establish close working relationships with children, young people and their families to identify the support they need, when they need it most, ensuring that they are at the centre of everything we do.

A large part of the hospice’s role is collaboration and networking with other professionals and services that are known to the baby, child, young person and family to ensure their support needs are fully understood and met as appropriate.

The hospice’s model of care offers babies, children, young people and their families access to hospice stays, home visits, day visits, transition support, symptom management stays and advice, end of life care and bereavement care. This can be provided within one of our hospices, at home, virtually or as in-reach into one of the local hospitals.

Our hospice teams understand the importance of providing holistic care and supporting the wellbeing of all family members and work hard to ensure that these needs are met where possible.

We hold special events and groups across the hospices that our families can access such as remembering days, dads’ groups, mums’ groups, teenage weekends, fetes, sibling weekends, bereavement groups and much more.

Our care teams are multi-disciplinary, consisting of nurses, doctors, carers, sibling workers, music therapists, social workers, psychological therapists and support staff that work together to provide care and support to all the family.

All of these roles allow a holistic approach to the care delivered and uniqueness in service provision.

The care teams pride themselves in giving families the opportunity to make precious memories and time to rest and recharge their batteries, which is vitally important.

Each of the hospices offers beautiful surroundings and facilities that families can utilise whilst they stay, allowing them time together without the everyday pressures or responsibilities.

We partner with local supporters to provide opportunities for memory-making and valuable family time for families during their stay.

As a group of hospices across the region we offer specialist palliative care advice and guidance to other teams and professionals.

We are also actively involved in teaching and training professionals working in healthcare, for example through teaching on university courses and running our own training sessions for local health care professionals and teams.

You can read more about how families are supported by Children’s Hospice South West at www.chsw.org.uk/care