Our strategy
Every child deserves many moments of happiness together with their loved ones. But for many families who need palliative care, the system is falling short, leaving parents and siblings feeling isolated and alone, and children missing out on life-changing support.
Our strategy refresh for 2026–2028, shaped by the voices of families and professionals, means that Together for Short Lives is focussed on what matters most: achieving our purpose to ensure every child, and their family, has high quality children’s palliative and end of life care, when and where they need it. With your support, we can make sure every family can live as well as possible as they navigate their child’s life, death, bereavement and beyond.
In the video below, you can hear from the families, professionals and supporters who inspire our work, and find out what Making Every Moment Count means for the next phase of our journey together.
If things get tough or I need to ask questions I know I can call Together for Short Lives. When I need them, it feels like we’re together.
Dee Cowburn, mother to Tilly, who has Rett Syndrome
Our strategic priorities
We published our current 10-year strategy in 2023. Our new, refreshed strategy reflects the work we have done to adapt and shape Together for Short Lives for our next strategic cycle, the period 2026 to 2028. In doing so, we have listened to families of children living with serious illness and the professionals and services who provide them with palliative care, so we can focus on what matters most to them.
Our strategic ambitions are:
- Increase equitable access to children’s palliative care.
- Improve the quality of care, ensuring the best support for families.
- Strengthen sustainability so families can rely on care where and when they need it.
These are big challenges, and they need big and bold solutions. View our strategy on a page, or keep reading to find out more.
There is an amazing network of children's hospices, NHS teams and other charities around the UK who provide children’s palliative care. It's incredible to think that, through Together for Short Lives, we can all speak with one voice.
Clare Buchanan, mother to Oliver, who died in 2023.
The context we are working in
A greater number of politicians and policymakers across the UK are recognising the amazing impact that palliative care can have for families of children living with serious illness. More understand why it is vital that families can access it, and why it is unacceptable that too many are left isolated and alone by a system that is not meeting their needs.
- In England, a House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee Expert Panel evaluated the state of palliative care during 2025. It found that inconsistent and poorly informed commissioning is a major barrier preventing children living with serious illness and their families from accessing high-quality palliative care, when and where they need it.
- A 2025 report by the Commission on Palliative and End of Life Care, of which our Chief Executive, Nick Carroll, was a commissioner, found similar challenges.
- In 2026, the Children’s Commissioner for England published a report revealing that thousands of children in England spend prolonged periods in hospital – sometimes months or years – not because of medical necessity but because the support required for safe discharge is unavailable.
- A Northern Ireland Assembly Health Committee inquiry report has found that children’s palliative care in Northern Ireland is significantly underfunded, creating major barriers to delivering the care children and families need.
- Public debates on proposed assisted dying laws in England, Scotland and Wales have put unprecedented focus on how, as a society, we care for people of all ages at the end of their lives.
The UK Government has acknowledged the challenges facing children and families in England and ministers across the UK have already committed to act, including by developing an all-age modern service framework (MSF) for palliative care for England. They plan to shift access to health and care as close to home as possible.
The Scottish Government’s palliative care strategy and a Welsh Government national service specification include ambitions that children will have more equitable access to well-coordinated, timely and high-quality palliative care.
These commitments are welcome and provide important context to our refreshed strategy.
What we have achieved already
Thanks to our amazing supporters, we have made much progress in our first strategic cycle to make sure more families get the support they need.
Across our programmes, we have worked to strengthen support for families of children living with serious illness by improving access to children’s palliative care and equipping professionals, and influencing national policy:
- Our Morrisons‑funded community outreach project focused on areas of highest need, connecting 1,415 families to services
- To improve understanding of children’s palliative care among non‑specialist professionals, our Learning to Communicate with Families initiative engaged 199 professionals across health, education, social care, faith groups and the voluntary sector.
- Our 2025 Conference brought together over 400 attendees to explore best practice and innovation in children’s palliative care, inspiring and reinvigorating professionals.
- Through our energy support work with SGN and Cadent, we advised more than 125,000 families on heating and safety and provided in-depth assistance to 4,500 families, helping to reduce debt, improve safety and ease financial pressures.
- We secured £80 million in ringfenced NHS funding for children’s hospices for 2026–2029 – described by Derian House as “a huge campaign win… for children living with serious illness and their families.”
- Thanks to our campaigning, 19% of local NHS bodies in England now formally commission 24/7 end of life care at home in line with national quality standards, up from 14% in 2024.
- Through the Kentown Wizard-funded Community Palliative Care Programme, we coordinated nursing, social care and hospice support for families who often struggled to navigate fragmented systems.
- We have generated vital income to sustain children’s palliative care in the UK. In 2024-25, our supporters helped us to raise and distribute over £2.7 million to support children’s hospices, ensuring they could continue to provide crucial care to children living with serious illness and their families.
The challenges we still face
NHS and voluntary sector children’s palliative care professionals in hospitals, children’s hospices and the community go above and beyond to meet the needs of children living with serious illness and their families. Yet families continue to face a series of challenges in accessing high quality, sustainable support when and where they need it because the system does not work for them.
We have listened to families of children living with serious illness and those who support them, hearing their stories and gathering data to build our insight of the state of children’s palliative care across the UK.
We have grouped these insights by our three strategy priority areas of access, quality and sustainability. Across each one, we are clear about the challenges, why they are important, and what statements we will be able to make if we are successful in achieving our three strategic priorities:
Increase equitable access to children’s palliative care
Improve the quality of care, ensuring the best support for families
Strengthen sustainability so families can rely on care where and when they need it
How we will deliver the next stage of our strategy
We will achieve our goals by focussing our work on three priority areas: direct support, system change and income generation:
| Focus area | Who we will reach | What we will do |
|---|---|---|
| Direct support | Children living with serious illness and their families | Providing information and support directly to families of children living with serious illness (signposting and referring into existing services and working to fill gaps in provision). |
| System change | Policy and decision makers; regional co-ordination | A renowned Centre for Evidence and Practice, collaborating, commissioning and sharing significant research and evidence to drive clinical excellence and policy design. |
| Working with leaders in governments, the health service, commissioning bodies and delivery organisations to improve the funding, quality, and consistency of children’s palliative care. | ||
| Income generation | Children’s hospice member organisations | The children’s hospice partnership fund: a leading fundraising scheme, working together with children’s hospices to secure national corporate partnerships. |
What our strategy means for you
For families of children living with serious illness and professionals who we will reach through our direct support
For families – and the professionals and services who support them – who we will reach with our work to change the system
Developing impactful ways for our supporters to connect with our cause
For politicians and policymakers
Working together as staff and trustees
Together for Short Lives are an amazing organisation and I’m proud to think that we can make a difference together.
Francesca Lennon, children’s nurse and fundraiser
Contact us, join us and support us. Together we will make sure that children living with serious illness and their families get the care and support they need, when and where they need it.
Because the number of children living with serious illness is so small compared to adults, we need your help so we can shout louder with them. With your support, our refreshed strategy will mean that they can access high quality children’s palliative care, when and where they need it.
