Children’s Palliative Care

Debate between Caroline Johnson and David Linden

Monday 1st July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Johnson]

The hon. Lady is right. In fact, NHS and local authority funding represents just 21% nationally of the money that children’s hospices need. The rest is raised by charities, but for some hospices in less affluent areas, raising the additional money that is required can be very challenging.

I welcome the fact that the Government have made their end of life care choice commitment, which is really clear about the care support choices that children should have. In our roles as co-chairs of the all-party parliamentary group for children who need palliative care, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) and I carried out an inquiry last year to find out the extent to which this commitment was being met. We found that Ministers were at risk of failing to meet that commitment because of funding, as described, and because the quality of palliative care that children and families can receive is variable, depending on the area in which the child lives.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, and I pay tribute to her expertise on this issue. Does she recognise that north of the border, in Scotland, the Scottish Government have recognised the need for parity of funding between adult care and children’s care, and that that is not the case in England? Will she join me in calling on the UK Government to look at the model in Scotland to see what a difference we have made and what has been delivered by, for example, CHAS—Children’s Hospices Across Scotland?

[Dr Johnson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I am not familiar with the details of how hospices are funded in Scotland, but one of our report’s recommendations was that the grant for children’s hospices should be increased to £25 million. That is something that I repeat this evening.

On 27 December last year, we received a late Christmas present when Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, announced that £7 million of funding over the next five years would be available to children’s hospices each year in addition to the £11 million children’s hospice grant, if the clinical commissioning groups could provide match funding. I understand the benefits of match funding because it increases the engagement of the CCGs locally, but where CCGs are not providing the funding, it can lead to services not being provided properly in that area. Also, later, when the long-term plan was produced, the detail showed that this funding was not only for children’s hospices but for other palliative care services. This was recognised as useful for providing services for children in areas currently not covered by a hospice, but it could equally mean that the money might be diluted into other causes and not reach the children who need it.

Two weeks ago, as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North said, we joined our secretariat, the excellent charity Together for Short Lives, which does much work in advocating for these children and their families, and we met parents and representatives from several hospice charities to discuss these issues further. One real concern to us at that time was that one of the charities, Acorns, which receives the most Government funding, was struggling to raise charitable donations in its area to cover costs and was consulting on closing one of its children’s hospices, in Walsall, meaning that families would have to travel much further for the care and support they needed. I know that that is something that no one in this House would want to see happen. Indeed, I have raised the issue with my hon. Friend the Minister for Care and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, both privately and in the House. I ask the Minister to raise the children’s hospice grant to £25 million a year and to ring-fence that money. It is a small amount within the NHS budget as a whole, but it would make a huge difference to children receiving hospice care and their families.