Hospices and Palliative Care Services

Lord Patel Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, for calling this debate and I echo his words about children’s hospices. It is on that that I will concentrate my brief remarks.

It is crucial in this debate that we consider palliative care for children as well as adults. There are 20,000 children and young people in the United Kingdom who will die before they reach adulthood. Some of them will die when very young; others will deteriorate slowly over many years. Families caring for these children and young people, often 24 hours a day, seven days a week, can feel under enormous emotional, physical and financial strain. Relationships can suffer, careers may have to be abandoned, siblings who are well can feel left out and normal family activities become almost impossible. Children’s hospices offer a lifeline to these children, young people and their families, helping ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances to cope with the challenges of everyday life. They provide a range of flexible, practical and free support at home or in the hospice to the entire family, often over many years and at any stage of a child’s illness from diagnosis for as long as it is needed.

There are currently 45 children’s hospices in the United Kingdom, 40 of which are in England. They provide flexible comprehensive care at home and in the hospice, help with pain control in children, support for families, end-of-life care and bereavement support. They are all registered charities, receiving very little statutory funding and relying on the generosity of the public. They struggle to get funding from primary care trusts. Only around 9 per cent of their funding comes from PCTs and local authorities. The palliative care funding review is a unique opportunity to put in place long-term funding. Localised GP commissioning will present serious challenges in commissioning children’s palliative care. I hope the Minister will agree that the national commissioning board should be the body responsible for commissioning palliative care for children. The key issue here is adequate funding for children’s hospices, which provide extremely valuable care to children and families and should have statutory funding.