500 signatures reached
To: MPP Stephen Crawford and the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
Ensure access to high-quality hospice palliative care for Ontarian children and their families
Please prioritize the passing of Bill 114, the Nancy Rose Act to create a province-wide strategy that ensures equity in access to paediatric hospice palliative care for all Ontarian children and their families.
Why is this important?
A child requiring hospice palliative care is a tragedy; a child requiring hospice palliative care and having no access is a catastrophe. 3000 children die each year in Ontario, many more children for years with conditions that will inevitably shorten their lives. For these most horrific of occasions, we must ensure that every Ontarian child in need and their family has access to high-quality care.
For children with serious health conditions, a palliative approach to care can increase quality of life (joy, fun, activity, socialization) and decrease the pain and suffering associated with their condition.
For the families of these children, hospice palliative care systems help support the emotional, psychological, spiritual, social, financial, and logistic burden that comes along with caring for a child with a serious health condition.
Paediatric hospice palliative care aims to support families where they feel most comfortable - which is, more often than not, at home - including at the end of their child's life. However, there are times when home is not feasible or when families simply need a break from 24/7 caregiving, pediatric hospices offer a home-like environment with 24/7 access to care and a community of love and support.
Paediatric hospice palliative care supports families (parents, siblings, grandparents, others) at diagnosis, through the illness course, at end of life, and beyond the child's death with the immense grief that comes with loving a child with a short life.
And yet, a report from 2012 found that 81% of Canadian children who had died and could have benefitted from hospice palliative care had no access.
All children and families in Ontario should have access to these supports in an equitable fashion. Bill 114, the Nancy Rose Act, sets the strategy to get us there.
The Bill:
https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-42/session-1/bill-114
Sandy introducing the Bill:
https://tinyurl.com/yyhc79qy
News coverage:
https://globalnews.ca/news/5331029/hamilton-mpp-sandy-shaw-pediatric-hospice-ontario/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/nancy-rose-1.5154598
https://www.thespec.com/living-story/9397436-mpp-sandy-shaw-to-pitch-a-provincewide-pediatric-palliative-care-strategy/
https://omny.fm/shows/scott-radley-show/how-will-the-nancy-rose-act-affect-children-across