Pediatric Serious Illness and Palliative Care

The Palliative Care Program supports clinical areas across the hospital to augment care, and improve capacity to support children and youth with serious illnesses and their families.

A serious illness is a condition that impacts life and daily functioning, with unknowns about the future and/or the condition, and is difficult to manage in symptoms, treatments and family stress.

In collaboration with Canuck Place, our PainCare 360 teams offer symptom management, provide education, and guide best practices. They focus on patient experience and relational/clinical improvements.

The team focuses on:

• Providing equitable serious illness and palliative care (inclusive of bereavement), regardless of the location of care or cause of illness
• Collaborating with hospital interdisciplinary care teams and Canuck Place to offer additional services, interventions and approaches to provide physical and psychological comfort
• Actively monitoring and improving the quality of relational, clinical, health-care system and bereavement care

Referral information

Patients need a referral to use this service.

Canuck Place Hospice accepts referrals from all members of a patient’s care team (medical and non-medical), family members, friends or self-referrals.

All Canuck Place services are available at no cost to families.

Children, youth and families experiencing a serious illness or who have palliative care needs, and who want a referral to Canuck Place Hospice, can call the intake nurse:

• Phone: 604-742-3476
• Toll-free: 1-877-882-2288, extension 3476
• Email: intake@canuckplace.org

If the referral is urgent, please call the nursing station at 604-742-3475.

Contact us

If you have questions about resources and supports at BC Children's Hospital related to living and managing serious illness, palliative care or bereavement needs, you can contact PainCare 360 at paincare360@phsa.ca.

The team is available from Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Additional resources

These links may be helpful when navigating palliative care:

• Kids Grief: an online resource that helps parents support their children when someone in their life is dying or has died
• Caring Together: an online resource for parents caring for a seriously ill or dying child, or who are experiencing pregnancy or infant loss
• Living My Culture: people from various cultures share their stories and wisdom of living with a serious illness
• Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association: advances hospice palliative care across the country by providing education, raising awareness, influencing public policy and collaborating with provincial hospice palliative care associations
• Canadian Virtual Hospice: a nationally funded website providing information and support from an interdisciplinary team of palliative experts, regardless of where you live or work in Canada
• The Dougy Center: provides support, resources and connection before and after the death of a child
• BC Children's Hospital pediatric pain guide for caregivers: the Family Resource Pain Guide helps families to learn about pain, and approaches to support comfort
• The Pediatric Serious Illness Partnership Guide (PDF) is a resource for those supporting a school-aged child with a serious illness
• Pediatric Advance Care Planning is a process to support children and families when making health-care decisions that align with their hopes, goals, beliefs and values
• The PHSA Ethics Service (PDF) is a free, confidential service that supports people seeking and accessing services, as well as their loved ones, to help resolve difficult health-care situations and issues