I am proud to have Kentown embedded within my service

As clinical lead of the South Cumbria Children’s Community Nursing Team (CCNT), I feel honoured and privileged every day to lead a dedicated, dynamic and innovative team of nurses as we care and advocate for some of our areas’ most vulnerable children and their families.

As a team, we are always striving to develop and evolve our service to improve the experience and outcomes for children and young people with palliative care needs, so, you can imagine how excited we were to learn about the Kentown Programme and that we would have - for the first time ever - a dedicated specialist palliative care nurse within our team, who would work as part of an integrated team of nurses, family support workers and family service co-ordinators.

On a personal level, I grew up in Cumbria but spent the first part of my career working in a major London Children’s hospital before returning to my hometown to start work in the community. The perspective I gained from working in two such contrasting environments opened my eyes in so many ways - not least to the health inequalities experienced by children and young people living with medical complexity and palliative care needs in our relatively remote and isolated community.

The prospect of the Kentown Programme gave me a new sense of hope and motivation that we could make a meaningful impact in improving the healthcare experience and narrow the equality gap for these families.

When Katie (our Kentown nurse) started to say she rose to the challenge, is an understatement. It was amazing to watch as she developed a brand new service within our team; building relationships with families with immense care and sensitivity, and tirelessly networking across multi-agencies locally and further afield to garner a shared understanding of the project's purpose and what children’s palliative care truly means.

From the offset, the impact of Kentown was visible and has only become more tangible with time.

Three years on, we couldn’t imagine life without the provision.

Children with palliative care needs are being properly recognised at the earliest opportunity. Practitioners have built confidence and competence in providing palliative care, and the children who have sadly died within the last three year period have had a very different experience of end of life care to those we’ve supported previously.

Kentown has highlighted the importance and benefit of integration and collaboration – both between the three components of the programme (nursing, family support, and service co-ordination), and the wide range of services/teams across the region working to care for these children and families. When I am asked about Kentown and my experience of it, I often find myself using the phrases ‘levelling up’ and ‘bridging the gap’ to explain its impact - and a huge part of this is down to the championing of collaborative ways of working the entire Kentown team lead with.

The project has also had a direct and lasting impact on the nurses within my team. Whereas previously we often felt isolated and vulnerable when visiting children at home who were approaching the end of their life, we now feel supported and empowered. We feel much closer and more connected with the tertiary-level specialist palliative care consultants and can access their expertise more easily and readily than before. In working with Kentown, CCNs have upskilled and gained more understanding of children’s palliative and end of life care, in turn developing the ability to practice with higher levels of confidence. Not only has the nursing aspect been invaluable, but the family support and co-ordinator components have been so uplifting and reassuring to the team.

Before Kentown landed, we often met families facing overwhelming financial or practical challenges directly related to caring for a child with palliative care needs, and would leave feeling disheartened as we felt there was limited meaningful and accessible support we could signpost to. Since the project began, families in this situation are consistently receiving proactive, hands-on support to access grants, essentials and even charitable holidays – making an enormous difference to both the families and our team, who finally feel we can take action when we see a family in need.

As a clinical lead, I am proud to have Kentown embedded within my service and over the past three years, have developed much higher expectations for the standard of care our children and families should receive, and feel more empowered to advocate for equitable, high-quality children’s palliative care across South Cumbria.

Thank you Kentown, and of course our very own Kentown Katie, for all the work you’ve done to make sustainable change when it was needed most.

Francesca Messenger-Jones

Clinical Lead, Community Children's Nursing South Cumbria