Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what directions and guidance the Department of Health and Social Care will provide to integrated care boards on commissioning palliative and end of life care for children and young people.

Children and young people’s palliative and end of life care is provided by a range of services and providers from across the statutory and voluntary, community and social enterprise sectors. Commissioning of these services is the statutory duty of integrated care boards (ICBs), which must commission palliative and end of life care services in response to the needs of their local population and ensure that they are provided by a range of local organisations with the experience and skills to meet those needs.

In July 2022, NHS England published statutory guidance for commissioners on palliative and end of life care, setting out the considerations for ICBs to meet their legal duties. A copy of this guidance is attached.

NHS England has also published a service specification for children and young people, which provides guidance on undertaking assessments to enable high-quality commissioning of services that meet both population need and preferences. A copy of this specification is attached.

NHS England’s palliative and end of life care team has recently engaged with 24 ICBs to understand how to better support commissioners, and has also reviewed all 42 ICB Joint Forward Plans for their inclusion of palliative and end of life care, with 69% of those plans making a specific mention. Further analysis is ongoing, but the intention is to use this information to help shape and focus support to ICBs.