Children must not be forgotten in health care debates, warns Alexander Devine charity

Children must not be forgotten about in future debates about the direction of health care, a leading charity has warned.

Helen Bennett, director of care at the Alexander Devine Children’s Hospice Service, was speaking at a meeting of the Royal Borough’s Health and Wellbeing Board last night to give an update on efforts to create a children’s palliative care team for Berkshire.

Addressing the board, she said: “I think there’s a real drive for us to focus on adult end-of-life care and it’s important that children don’t get forgotten in that.”

She went on to highlight a lack of health care professionals trained to deal with child end-of-life care, adding ‘there are more children with a life-limiting condition than are accessing the service’.

The board also heard from Chief Inspector Gavin Wong, of Thames Valley Police, (TVP) about plans to pilot a mental health street triage scheme in East Berkshire to provide an out-of-hours ‘rapid response capability’ to assess mental health issues encountered by police.

If approved, the scheme, which would cover Maidenhead, Windsor, Slough and Bracknell Forest, is expected to cost £136,000 a year, with TVP supplying about £57,000.