Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential role of community-based social palliative care services for children in the context of his policy on shifting care from hospital to community settings.

Children’s hospices often provide holistic care, wrap-around services and additional support to children and their families that extend beyond core healthcare provision. This, for example, includes complementary therapies, respite care, and short breaks. The £80 million of revenue funding should help give children’s hospices the stability they need to plan ahead and will help them to continue to offer social palliative care services, such as respite care and short breaks, for children with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions, as well as their families.

We see children’s hospices and children’s social palliative care services as playing an important role in neighbourhood health and the shift to community. Achieving our vision for a Neighbourhood Health Service will rely critically on strong partnership working between health and social care, also working closely with wider local government services and the voluntary, community, and social enterprise sector to better understand and meet the needs of individuals and local populations in a holistic way.

We expect neighbourhood teams and services to be designed in a way that reflects the specific needs of local populations. Our aim is to have a Neighbourhood Health Centre in each community that brings together National Health Service, local authority, and voluntary sector services in one building to help create a holistic offer that meets the needs of local populations.