Reflections on some learning from the Covid-19 pandemic: support for parents of children facing serious parental illness and death needs to be integral to health care

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has further highlighted the significance of pre-bereavement care for families and children facing parental death. Holistic family care, including support for the preparation of dependents, is core to specialist palliative care services in Scotland, but was hugely challenging during the height of the pandemic. It also exposed the challenges in all areas of acute healthcare for families with children, including intensive care departments. Parents need specific support appropriate to their children’s needs. This includes how to share information with their children, and how to help their children to express their opinions and share their emotional responses about their experience. Parental bereavement has wide-reaching consequences for the lives of children and young people, and the ability of the surviving parent to support them is crucial. Starting to support parents before death provides the opportunity to ensure children are included in ways that are appropriate for that family. A discrete service to provide this specialised pre-and post-bereavement support to families, and training and ongoing support to practitioners across all areas of hospital and health care, is required. Catriona Macpherson works as a children and families practitioner in specialist palliative care in NHS Fife. Fife is unusual in that all specialist palliative care in hospital, hospice and community is provided by the NHS, and families with children can be supported from our early intervention clinic while receiving oncology care through to some considerable time after bereavement. All services continued to be delivered during the pandemic by using additional resources of virtual clinics, ‘garden’ visits, ‘drive-by’ visits and outdoor groups in a local therapeutically designed space, and included support to any families with children and young people parentally bereaved by Covid-19.