Children as next of kin in adult palliative care - development and implementation of lokal action plans

Every year many children experience that someone in their nearness gets a severe illness and dies. These children have their rights to be informed and have support according to their needs and level of development. Recent research show that children’s perspectives and rights as next of kin are often overlooked in health and welfare. When children experience that their relatives are severe ill and become influenced by the circumstances in the family, their own health are at-risk.

The children’s situations in health and welfare have been considered in Swedish national legislations and Region Sörmland has developed evidence based guidelines for working with children as next of kin in health care.

The guide lines are a foundation to develop local action plans in different clinical settings. The project is an implementation project, where the development of local action plans are studied.

The intervention is to arrange several learning situations for two multi professional teams on two units for adult palliative care. The implementation process will be studied as well as the effect of the intervention.