Care of Critically Ill Children

Lord Watts Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

Yes, the noble Lord is quite correct. We know that, in many walks of life, so to speak, there are certain sectors of society that do not get the same level of provision and sometimes miss out. We had the debate last week on maternity provision and saw instances in relation to ethnic minorities as well as people with learning difficulties. We need to make sure that all the communications are there and that everyone is armed to provide the right levels of interface and communication in what are some really difficult cases.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, many families with critically ill children find it very difficult to access treatment because often specialist treatment is only available hundreds of miles away from where they live. That puts tremendous pressure on the family financially. Do the Government intend to do any more to help those families?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

Clearly, we would all agree that the families need to be the priority in these terrible cases. What we have tried to do—and I have also done my own research into this—is make available what I call independent funding requests for when there is a new course of treatment which might not be allowed generally by NICE to give opportunities in those instances as well. I will come back to the noble Lord on things such as travel support and other expenses.