'It's not just all about the fancy words and the adults': Recommendations for practice from a qualitative interview study with children and young people with a parent with a life-limiting illness.

Background: Healthcare professionals report challenges in supporting dying patients who have dependent children. These parents are often uncertain how to meet the needs of their children and require appropriate support from professionals. There is limited evidence based guidance for professionals around this issue, which is informed by the views and experiences of children themselves.

The perspectives of children and young people affected by parental life-limiting illness: An integrative review and thematic synthesis.

Background: Although the death of a parent during childhood is relatively commonplace, the voices of children affected by parental life-limiting illness are under-represented in research evidence. Guidance for healthcare professionals is largely based upon professional opinion rather than the experience of children themselves.

Aim: To synthesise and appraise the literature from primary research with children about their experience of having a parent with a life-limiting illness.

Parental Life-Limiting Illness: What Do We Tell the Children?

Being diagnosed with and having a life-limiting illness is a stressful experience which is compounded when the patient has dependent children. An important aspect of the patient's psychosocial care should include recognition that their children are also likely to experience severe stress because of the illness. However, children's needs are often overlooked during the illness.

Communication and support from health-care professionals to families, with dependent children, following the diagnosis of parental life-limiting illness: A systematic review.

Background: Communication between parents and their children about parental life-limiting illness is stressful. Parents want support from health-care professionals; however, the extent of this support is not known. Awareness of family's needs would help ensure appropriate support.

Supporting children when a parent has a life-threatening illness: the role of the community practitioner.

The last two decades have seen an academic and practice based shift in the acknowledgment that children require support following the death of a significant person. However, the needs of children who are living amidst parental life threatening illness are not, as yet, so clearly recognised or acknowledged. These children are often forgotten and their needs are frequently peripheral, if not absent, within the clinical setting.

Death of a parent and the children's experience: don't ignore the elephant in the room.

This paper explores two interlinked components of practitioner's support to children when a parent or carer is at the end of life or has died. The primary issue relates to communication and the competence and confidence of practitioners when working with this community of children. The paper suggests that related to this is the lack of training practitioners receive, both as students and through continual professional development, within the fields of social care and health.