Solent NHS Trust is partnering with Hospice UK, a bereavement support charity, to help young people (aged 16-25) with life-limiting conditions transition from adolescence to adulthood.
The project is part of a wider aim to bring together regional children’s and national hospices, the NHS, volunteer groups, and young people, to build a structured support base – or Transition Community of Practice.
Within the project, Solent will develop an ECHO transition network, which aims to have a far reaching and transformational impact on care and support when young people are transitioning from child to adult services.
The Transition Community of Practice will use technology to ensure equipment, used by young adults receiving palliative care, is employed in the most effective way in enabling individuals to get out of their homes and experience life as they would like to.
The equipment for the young adults includes lifting gear, mobility vehicles and computer software to provide computer generated speech.
Within the Solent statement, the trust notes the effective sharing of costly devices will reduce disparity in quality-of-life experience, as well as help to ensure clinical practitioners – such as community palliative care nurses – can deliver the ‘highest’ level of care and support to their patients.
Solent NHS Trust said of the new project and the drivers behind it: “Solent is determined to reduce health inequality and improve access to care. As a Trust, Solent aims to provide great care and are consistently using new IT and modern technology to deliver better outcomes, enabling service users to stay safe and well in their own homes.
“Solent is now seeking to advance this further, by genuinely improving quality of life for young people who have the right to experience life as their peers do.”
Overseen by Hospice UK, the project is supported by Solent, as well as Keech Hospice in Bedfordshire and the Yorkshire and Humber Palliative Care Network.
