Family support service proves highly popular
Emily Rogers
Monday, June 23, 2014
Service enhances the lives of children with life-limiting illnesses and their families and makes them less socially isolated.
Project
Family Support Service
Funding
An estimated £200,000 a year from voluntary donations
Background
Ever since Richard's House Children's Hospice opened 12 years ago, family support has been a key part of its work with children with life-limiting illnesses.
But when senior nurse Jon Wheater joined as the hospice's director of family and care services two years ago, he realised staff needed to engage more with children and their families between stints of residential care and reach out to new families who previously had not seen the hospice as a place for them. "Parents were saying 'I know it's where children go to die, but I don't want to think about that yet'," he says.
Action
One of the first things Wheater did after he joined the hospice in April 2012 was erect large notice boards in the corridors, displaying all the activities on offer to children and families. He went on to create a dedicated family support service within the hospice by bringing staff who provided family activities into a single team.
The hospice's family support team is made up of an activities co-ordinator, an art therapist, a music therapist, play specialist, a siblings co-ordinator, a chaplain and the director of a weekly film-making project.
A dedicated manager has just joined the team and from the autumn, it will include a youth worker to help young people in their transition to adult hospice services.
Children and their families can access the service once they have met the criteria for hospice care. Alongside one-to-one therapy and bereavement support, the team provides recreational activities for families, which "take them away from their child's condition and make them back into a family again", says Wheater.
These activities also enable staff to get to know their young clients and their families and "triage" them to further support within the team or to other professionals such as counsellors. Recent activities include a family CD production workshop and the weekly Living Films project, which Wheater describes as a "therapeutic tool', enabling children and siblings to make films telling their personal stories.
The plan is to make the family support service the first port of call for all new families referred to the hospice.
Outcome
Of the 249 families looked after by the hospice over the past year, 114 used it specifically for its family support service - although Wheater estimates that nearly all families use it at some point.
Feedback forms gathered from 30 children and 39 family members at family support events between December and May this year showed all respondents enjoyed attending the hospice.
Of the 19 children who answered the question about whether they thought the hospice had helped them, 17 said it had.
