Milestone framework sets standard admired by colleagues abroad

I HAVE worked in palliative care for 25 years and have seen significant advancements in how we plan, prioritise and deliver palliative care.

Without doubt, 2015 was a milestone. The Scottish Government has shown a continued commitment to improving palliative care and its 2015 Strategic Framework for Action on Palliative and End of Life Care set the bold ambition everyone who needs palliative care has access to it by 2021.

As chief executive of CHAS, Scotland’s national children’s hospice service, I am committed to helping deliver this. I believe one of our fundamental rights should be a good and dignified death, and palliative care is central to this.

The framework set out how we can achieve this, including integrated health and social care partnerships, improved education and addressing the fears and misconceptions around end-of-life support.

However, what was also significant is that, for the first time, children’s palliative care was recognised as having its own particular challenges and opportunities and that there was an urgency in improving care for the 0-25 year age group.

In the same year the Scottish Government’s Health and Sport Committee inquiry, We need to talk about palliative care, recommended one commitment to improving children’s palliative care was to bring parity of funding between it and adult’s palliative care. Working with the Scottish Government, and with cross party support, we were able to deliver this last year. It is a model our counterparts in the rest of the UK are keen to mirror.

In Scotland we are clear on why we need increased funding. The Children in Scotland requiring Palliative care study (The ChiSP Study), which we commissioned along with the Scottish Government, showed for the first time the challenges we face in Scotland – 15,400 children living with a lifeshortening condition; three will die each week and at present CHAS is only reaching one of these; and the greatest number of deaths occur in children under one year. Our focus is on ensuring we reach every family who needs our care.

We have already created partnerships with our NHS and social care colleagues, bringing our services into hospitals and communities, but as with adult palliative care, it is in its infancy. We need to increase our presence and work in more hospitals and communities

Armed with The ChiSP Study, we are working to build the detailed knowledge on which communities need our care most, particularly families from minority or marginalised communities and those from areas of deprivation. Again this is not unique to children’s palliative care.

Today’s report rightly highlights Scotland is committed to ensuring everyone has a good death and colleagues in the rest of the UK and further afield look at us as an example. Everyone involved in palliative care in Scotland will continue to address the challenges to ensure every child or adult and their family can access the care they need when they need it.