Professional/Short course Enhancing Practice in Palliative Care for Children, Young People and Families

Content

Themes covered in the module syllabus typically include:

Psychosocial support throughout the palliative care journey

• Accompanying families through grief, loss and bereavement from diagnosis to death and beyond
• Understanding spiritual and cultural aspects of children's palliative care.
• Support and advice on practical, social and emotional issues faced by families and staff at each stage.
• Ethical and legal frameworks in children's palliative care including, but not limited to, best interest decisions such as safeguarding, the withholding or withdrawal of treatment.

Communication

• Handling sensitive and complex information with the child, siblings and other family members.
• Communication when senses and abilities are impaired
• Recognising and responding to emotional distress with empathy.
• Facilitating significant discussions including diagnosis, parallel planning, advance care planning, organ and tissue donation, withholding or withdrawal of treatment and transition.

Multidisciplinary holistic care

• Referral pathways, criteria and access to services.
• Providing collaborative and coordinated partnership working across a range of health, education, and social care settings, including NHS, social enterprise, private and voluntary sector organisations
• The roles of members of the multidisciplinary team involved in assessing, planning, delivering and reviewing care across the life course and after death, including parallel planning, Team Around the Child meetings and the Child Death Overview Process.
• Practice guidelines, polices and their role in informing palliative care delivery.

Collaborative working to promote quality of life

• Working with children, families, and the multi-disciplinary team to monitor and manage symptoms.
• Approaches to assessing, promoting and enriching quality of life, including complementary and music therapies, sensory activities, play and education.
• The nature of the therapeutic role of practitioners in a palliative context, promoting self-care and maintaining boundaries.
• Working together to support transition to adult services.

Learning and Teaching

A variety of teaching methods will be used to facilitate learning in this module including:

• seminars
• workshops
• presentations
• directed and independent learning
• case study discussion through action learning sets

The approach for this module is based upon the model of adult education. Teaching strategies that value your previous learning and placement experiences are applied throughout the module.

The module will be structured around facilitated seminars which will provide opportunities to share experience and consolidate learning.

Study time

A total of 48 hours in the form of blended face-to-face and online seminars over five days and self-directed learning over three days.

Assessment

Presentation of a poster, 10 minutes for level 6 (undergraduate level); 15 minutes for level 7 (Masters level), which applies core concepts of children's palliative care to a real (anonymised) or fictitious case of a child or young person with a life-limiting condition, supported by reference to the evidence base. There will be a question and answer session following the presentation (5 minutes for level 6; 15 minutes for level 7).

Formative assessment will include group work that demonstrates understanding of children's palliative care, including reflective practice, self-assessment and giving feedback.