Palliative Care: Pregnancy

(asked on 20th February 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what palliative care is available to mothers whose unborn baby receives a diagnosis of a life-limiting disability and wishes to carry her baby to full term; and what plans his Department has to increase the availability of such services.


Answered by
Jackie Doyle-Price Portrait
Jackie Doyle-Price
This question was answered on 25th February 2019

The Government is working to improve the care and support for mothers whose unborn baby receive a diagnosis of a life-limiting disability and who wish to carry their baby to full term.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) ‘Guidance on End of Life Care for Infants, Children and Young People with Life Limiting Conditions’ describes the care and support that families of children with life-limiting conditions should expect to receive. The NICE Quality Standards set out that parents should be given information about emotional and psychological support including how to access it; and when their child is nearing the end of their life, they should be supported in developing an advance care plan for their baby.

These standards are reflected in ‘A Perinatal Pathway for Babies with Palliative Care Needs’ produced by the charity Together for Short Lives and in the ‘National Bereavement Care Pathway’ (NBCP). In 2018, the Department provided £106,000 in funding, in addition to an initial £50,000, to Sands, the stillbirth and neonatal death charity, to work with other baby loss charities and Royal Colleges to produce the NBCP to reduce the variation in the quality of bereavement care provided by the National Health Service. The NBCP is currently being rolled out officially to 32 trusts and in October 2018, all the NBCP guidance materials and tools were published online.

In addition, the Long Term Plan sets out steps that the NHS is taking to improve access to perinatal mental healthcare for mothers and fathers, and support for parents whose children are in neonatal services as well as new investment in local children’s palliative and end of life care services including children’s hospices.

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