We offer a children’s nursing and psychology service within the community for children with life threatening, life limiting conditions.

We work closely with a team of clinicians with different specialities to support families to care for their children in the place they call home.

Core Team

We can help with:

• Clinical tasks that can be done safely at home to avoid a hospital visit such as blood taking, specimen collection, sleep studies.
• Planning with the multi-professional teams to meet the child’s nursing needs.
• Training families and carers in specific nursing tasks.
• Discharge planning to smooth the path between hospital and home.
• Palliative care and end of life planning when appropriate.
• Bereavement support.
• Transition planning into adult services.
• Assessment and individualised care planning for each child.

Continuing Care Team (CCT)
The Continuing Care Team develop, manage, and deliver care to children who have met the required Children’s Continuing Care eligibility through the local Integrated Care Board. The care is delivered by specially trained lifetime support workers and nurses all year round who provide overnight support to parents and in school settings.

Lifetime Psychology Service

The clinical psychology team work alongside the nursing team to support the emotional and psychological wellbeing of the family. Psychology work with the children/young people themselves, siblings and members of the family who are involved in caring. The team’s work includes:

• Helping you come to terms with diagnosis and the future.
• Support with relationships and talking about difficult issues with each other and people outside the family.
• Managing difficult treatments.
• Managing psychological difficulties such as anxiety, trauma, depression or other difficult thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
• Helping to make decisions about now or the future in relation to a child’s health condition.
• Group support e.g. sibling group, family days, and participation groups.
• Working with other professional networks such as schools or hospitals to improve quality of life and care for a child/family.
• To manage loss and bereavement.

Resources

Parent Carer Forum – North Somerset

Parent Carer Forum – South Glos

Parent Carer Forum – Bristol

Together for Short Lives

Chat Health