Moscow's Children's Hospice

The hospice was set up specifically to care for children dying of cancer in their own homes. The team of experienced staff and volunteers offers palliative care and pain relief to children and emotional support to their families. The hospice also helps families with the costs of drugs and travel if hospital stays are necessary. The Children's Hospice is the first of its kind in Moscow and provides a service to the whole city. The hospice receives no state funding and relies on the goodwill of medics to visit terminally ill children in their own homes.

Over the next few years the Children's Hospice aims to:

• establish a special in-patient hospice facility for children who cannot be cared for at home
• increase capacity by training more medical staff and recruiting and training more volunteers
• Develop, publish and disseminate materials on palliative care provide training and information to specialists, volunteers and parents throughout Russia.
• Providing psychological support requires significant emotional resources from the staff. As part of its new training programme PinH is providing a ‘burnout prevention course and new skills in bereavement counselling. This will foster the sustainability of the programme aswell as improving effectiveness of the work .