About Children's Palliative Care

In short, children’s palliative care seeks to provide a child with the best quality of life possible from the time they are diagnosed with a palliative care need until the point where specialist palliative services are no longer required or until the end of life. Palliative care provides not just physical care such as pain relief and symptom management but also emotional, social and spiritual support.

Children’s Palliative Care also provides support for families who care for a child with palliative needs. This support can range from emotional support services to respite care services. It also encompasses coming to terms with bereavement and loss and adjusting to life after losing a child.

Children’s Palliative Care could be seen as a philosophy of care that stretches across a broad range of services whose core goal is to make a children’s lives as comfortable as possible while they have a life limiting or life threatening condition.

This website seeks to augment the services and expertise offered by palliative care and is not a primary information source. The primary source for all information concerning your child’s illness, treatment, prognosis and care should be the key health professionals involved in your child’s care. This website will hopefully help broaden your understanding of palliative care and make it easier for you to understand what is happening to your child’s life at this time.

Below are some links to help you navigate this site and find out more about children’s palliative care and the journey you may be about to undergo.