SAFEGUARDING GROWING NEEDS
For children living with complex, life-shortening conditions, safeguarding means ensuring professionals have the knowledge and support to protect wellbeing and quality of life. As more children live longer, Mandy Thorpe, Practice Educator at Martin House Children’s Hospice, explores why healthcare education must evolve alongside their changing needs.
Medical advances have changed what is possible for babies, children and young people with life-shortening conditions. More are surviving infancy, living through childhood and reaching adolescence or adulthood.
That progress should be celebrated. But many children require complex care over several years, involving specialist equipment, multiple medications and support from a range of professionals.
It raises an important question: has healthcare education kept pace with the changing needs of the children we care for?
A CHANGING NATIONAL PICTURE
According to the Martin House Research Centre at the University of York, the number of children and young people in England with life-shortening conditions rose by 163% between 2001/02 (32,975) and 2017/18 (86,625). Prevalence increased from 26.7 to 66.4 children per 10,000, with more than 95,000 projected to be living with these conditions by 2030.
Better diagnosis and recording may explain part of that rise, but advances in medicine and technology are also enabling children to live for longer.
The increase has been particularly marked in Yorkshire and the Humber and the North West, while prevalence remains higher in more deprived communities. The latest ONS figures found
This changing picture has implications far beyond specialist services. As more children live longer with complex conditions, a wider range of healthcare professionals will be involved in their care. Paediatric palliative care can no longer be treated as knowledge needed only by hospice specialists.
TRAINING MUST EVOLVE ALONGSIDE CARE
The professionals who attend our courses are skilled and compassionate. What many have lacked is the opportunity to build their understanding of children's palliative care before they need it in practice.
“Medicine has advanced. Our education must advance with it.”
that infant mortality in England's most deprived communities was more than twice the rate in the least deprived. Although mortality figures do not directly measure demand for palliative care, they underline the importance of planning services and education around the needs of different communities.
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