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<\/p>\nOn 16 July 2021, the Children\u2019s Palliative Care Society and its partners (Di\u017evanagi association and Valmoniras farm) met Latvia\u2019s Minister of Welfare Gatis Egl\u012btis, Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Welfare Evita Z\u0101l\u012bte-Grosa, Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Health Ilm\u0101rs D\u016br\u012btis, head of the Treatment Quality Division of the Ministry of Health Sanita Janka, head of the Social and Work Commission of the Parliament Andris Skridis, health and social consultant for the Latvian Association of Local and Regional Governments Ilze Rudz\u012bte, chairman of the \u0136ekava Municipal Council Juris \u017dilko, his first deputy Agnese Gedu\u0161eva, and second deputy Valts Variks, and head of the \u0136ekava Social Service Agnese Mence-Katkevi\u010da, to jointly discuss how to work together and implement the idea of the \u2018Sap\u0146u tilti\u2019 children\u2019s palliative care centre that could become the first facility of its kind in the Baltics.<\/p>\n
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For more than 20 years, the Children\u2019s Palliative Care Society has been providing assistance to seriously ill children and members of their families. Currently, the society supports 350 families with seriously ill children, and the number of such families grows every year. The service is available to families 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year: 24-hour assistance hotline (with consultations by a doctor, nurse, chaplain, social worker, therapist), out-patient consultations and home visits, organising support groups for the parents and siblings of ill children. This means that these children can live at home, instead of hospitals and care facilities.<\/p>\n
Over the last 2.5 years, the children’s palliative care team carried out 12,938 home visits and consultations at the children’s palliative care service, provided 12,181 consultations by phone and 2592 online.<\/p>\n
Everyday work in such close contact with the families crystallises their really urgent and important needs, and the necessity to work as a team and to grow.<\/p>\n
\u2018The main purpose of creating the \u2018Sap\u0146u tilti\u2019 children’s palliative care centre is to improve the quality of life of seriously ill children, to give their families breathing space, and to provide dignified end-of-life care to the children and their families, as well as a way to create memories. Caring for a seriously ill child requires its parents to provide attention 24 hours a day. Children are often brought up by one parent who, thus, have difficulty entering the job market and participating in social life, with a high risk of burn-out.\u00a0Parents supported by the Children\u2019s Palliative Care Society say that the events that the society organises are often the only times during the year that they can leave their home and devote some time to themselves. Finding someone with the right skills to look after such children is also difficult, because they has special needs: not everyone can replace a gastrostoma or manage a tracheostoma, or provide care to a child that is lying down or cannot speak.\u00a0Also, in families with children that have special needs, the needs of healthy family members often become a last priority. There are 133 of children’s palliative care centres in Europe, known as hospices globally, and none exists in the Baltics. We sincerely hope that together, we can create the first one here, in Latvia,\u2019 Anda Jansone, the pioneer of children’s palliative care in Latvia, said.<\/p>\n
The children’s palliative care centre is to provide:<\/p>\n
Multiple rounds of discussions involving the Children\u2019s Palliative Care Society and the specialists of the Ministries of Welfare and Health took place on 15 July 2021, as part of the conference \u2018Tilti, kas vieno\u2019 (\u2018Bridges that Unite Us\u2019)* tiltivieno.lv, devoted to raising the questions of children\u2019s palliative care, and all of the parties involved proposed that they meet to agree on the best solution for managing and improving children\u2019s palliative care services in the future. On 16 July the society organised the meeting at the location that is to be the site of the future \u2018Sap\u0146u tilti\u2019 multifunctional children\u2019s palliative care centre, providing support and care for families with seriously ill children that are in a severe functional condition or have a limited life-span.<\/p>\n
The following matters were discussed during the meeting:<\/p>\n
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During the meeting, all its participants acknowledged the need for continuing the work on the plan to create palliative care centres, the growing relevance of the topic of palliative care, and the need for a uniform system of assistance that involves the national and local governments, non-governmental organisations, parents and the general public.\u00a0 There are plans to soon organise work groups for developing a coordinated short and long-term strategy for children\u2019s palliative care, and to develop the idea of creating the \u2018Sap\u0146u tilti\u2019 children\u2019s palliative care centre.<\/p>\n
The Children\u2019s Palliative Care Society will hold its second \u2018Tilti, kas vieno\u2019* conference on 12 October 2021, to report on the progress of these affairs, and to urge the parties involved to joint the process.<\/p>\n
* The event is financially supported by the Social Integration Fund, using funding allocated by the Latvian government. The Children\u2019s Palliative Care Society is in charge of the content of the conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On 16 July 2021, the Children\u2019s Palliative Care Society and its partners (Di\u017evanagi association and Valmoniras farm) met Latvia\u2019s Minister of Welfare Gatis Egl\u012btis, Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Welfare Evita Z\u0101l\u012bte-Grosa, Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Health Ilm\u0101rs D\u016br\u012btis, head of the Treatment Quality Division of the Ministry of Health Sanita Janka,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":995,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n