Transition: strategic approaches

Whether your service is for children or adults, at some point it’s likely that you will need to support young people who are:

• beginning to move from children’s palliative care services into adulthood
• in the process of moving
• have recently transitioned into adult care. 

When children and young people are being discharged from a familiar service, planning is key. It is important to start preparing them and their families as early as possible so they can understand the options available to them and decide what suits them best. 

For young people who transition from children’s services into adult services it is really important to get a balanced ‘push and pull’ from one service into the other. 

Raising awareness of young people’s needs across your organisation will help you ensure everyone understands how to support this population. 

Transition touches all aspects of a young person’s life. It requires integrated working between children’s and adult services, as well as wider health and care providers. Developing a strategic, holistic and patient-centred approach to transition will help you work in partnership with others to ensure young people’s needs are met.

Transition should be included in your hospice or palliative care service’s overall strategy and business plan.

Your workforce plays a huge role in whether or not a young person’s experience of transition will be positive. As well as making sure all your staff and volunteers have an understanding of young people’s needs, it’s helpful to have specialists who are either employed in a transition role or who have a special interest in the care of young people.

The role of the transition worker varies across the country. We have been given permission to share some example job descriptions:

Transition Services Coordinator - Noah's Ark

Children and Young People (CYP) Engagement Officer - Demelza

Young Adults Transition Lead - Bolton Hospice

Transition Lead (Project Post) - Keech Hospice Care

Youth / Transition Worker - Helen and Douglas House

Several organisations provide training about transition support. (Please note that the content and views expressed by these organisations do not represent the views of Hospice UK).

Together for Short Lives carried out a literature search on Transition, with a commentary from Carrie James, ECHO Transition Partnership Manager at Hospice UK.