Ty Hafan, the children’s hospice in Wales, has introduced its first ever community children’s nurse, who will specialise in supporting children with life-limiting illnesses and their families across Powys.
Working in partnership with Powys Teaching Health Board (PTHB), and based with the children’s community nursing team, Sara Jones took up her post in December 2018, and for the next two years, will be helping life-limited children achieve the best quality of life in a setting of their own or their family’s choosing.
Sara’s role – the first of its kind in Wales – will include visiting children in their own homes and helping them with their physical needs, pain management and symptom control, but also supporting their families with their emotional, social and other needs. Sara will also be using her own deep understanding and long experience of palliative care to provide families and professionals caring for life limited children in Powys with a point of contact where they can go for help and advice.
Part of Sara’s palliative role will be offering support to parents or carers for grief and loss when their child is nearing the end of their life and after their death. She’ll also be identifying children across the county who would benefit from a palliative care service.
Powys is Wales’ largest county, but has no district general hospital and no children’s wards. Unlike other Health Boards that Ty Hafan works with, PTHB has no existing specialist paediatric palliative care nurses, and its geographical location means that there is limited access to children’s hospices.
With 25 years experience as a children’s nurse, 19 of which have been spent providing specialist care, comfort and support to life limited children and their families at Ty Hafan’s Sully based hospice, Sara will be working with PTHB to pass on her skills, experience and expertise in palliative care.
Ty Hafan is committed to ensuring that all families with life limited children have access to high quality palliative care support and by investing in a community based nurse, they are able to reach more families and offer this support where and when it is needed. With Powys being one of the furthest reaching areas served by Ty Hafan, it was an ideal location to initiate this new project. It is hoped now to work with other health boards to provide a similar service across the Ty Hafan catchment area.