Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what support is available for young adults dealing with a family bereavement due to cancer in (a) England and (b) East Lancashire.

Bereavement services are locally commissioned by clinical commissioning groups.

From a national perspective, NHS England advises that it commissions the National Council for Palliative Care to coordinate the Dying Matters Coalition (www.dyingmatters.org/page/coping-bereavement). This includes a wide range of work for raising public awareness and encouraging conversations about death, dying and bereavement, which affect young adults dealing with a family bereavement.

The National Palliative and End of Life Care Partnership, of which NHS England is a member, published its new Ambitions for Palliative and End of Life Care: A national framework for local action 2015-2020 on 8 September 2015. The National Bereavement Alliance, which includes the Children’s Bereavement Network, is a member of this Partnership as well. One of the foundations identified as being required in order to achieve the six ambitions articulated in this framework is ‘Involving, supporting and caring for those important to the dying person’. This refers to the young adult dealing with a family bereavement as well.

In One Chance to Get it Right (published June 2014), which was the system-wide response to the report More Care Less Pathway, the Leadership Alliance for the Care of Dying People (of which NHS England was a member) included in its recommendations on ‘desired characteristics of education and training programmes for care in the last days of life’, a learning objective on ‘assessing and addressing the needs of those important to the dying person, including in bereavement’.

In addition, NHS England has recently completed a project with NHS Choices to improve the range and quality of information available on end of life care on its website – including information around bereavement:

www.nhs.uk/Livewell/bereavement/Pages/young-people-bereavement.aspx