Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure that funding for children’s hospices working across multiple Integrated Care Boards is not reduced when funding is devolved to individual boards.

Integrated care boards (ICBs) have a legal duty to commission palliative and end of life care services that meet the needs of their population, including those of children and young people.

It is for ICBs to decide how to distribute resources in local areas by addressing priorities. To support transition to the new ICBs from the predecessor clinical commission group (CCG) structure, NHS England has disaggregated allocations to CCG level, in line with its share of the weighted population of the ICB.

The development of seven palliative and end of life care Strategic Clinical Networks will support working between integrated care systems and help develop sustainable commissioning models.