Name: Katrina Williams
Organisation: Claire House Children’s Hospice
Award Category: Healthcare Professional
Sponsored By:
Voting Is Now Closed
My Plea:
My name is Kat Williams and I am a Perinatal Palliative Care Nurse Consultant at Claire House Children’s Hospice in Merseyside, I often get asked “how do you do your job?”
The difference my role and Claire House can make to support families through their perinatal palliative care journey is so difficult to put into words, but as a parent once said, “We are so thankful that Kat and Claire House helped us create precious memories with our baby girl that we will now cherish forever as that is all we have left”.
Perinatal palliative care is an evolving speciality however, five years ago the number of referrals for hospice support was few and far between. My passion when I started this role was to ensure every family is given choice in place of care and death be that hospital, hospice or home and they have access to specialist palliative care support through diagnosis, birth, the child’s life, and death.
I knew this was going to be a challenge and the only way to succeed was to establish and create good collaborative working between hospital, hospice and families. I developed key links with the Fetal Medicine and Neonatal Units within the Merseyside area. This includes regular presence at fetal medicine clinics, neonatal ward rounds and education about hospice services. Patience has been key in building partnerships, but from the very onset it was clear that children’s hospices have a definitive role within perinatal palliative care. Since the initial development of links in 2014, referrals (aged 0-1 years) accepted for hospice care increased by 262%. This has impacted on all services offered by the hospice, including a 167% increase in neonatal referrals for the use of our bereavement suite.
Families are now offered a 24/7 on-call service for specialist perinatal palliative care which includes both emotional and clinical support and is provided in all care settings. This integrated approach to care right from diagnosis, is invaluable to families. A key element of my role is to develop a parallel plan for all the possible eventualities which I believe is integral to gold standard palliative care. These are difficult conversations to have, but many families have already thought about the ‘what if’ questions. When introducing the concept of parallel planning, the key has been helping families to continue to ‘hope for the best’, but have a plan for the worst, which is reassuring for many parents. Capturing what is important to the family and their wishes is essential, as there is only one chance to get this right. This is particularly relevant in the neonatal intensive care environment, as babies can deteriorate very rapidly.
Working together enabled many families to fulfil their wishes to take their babies either home or to the hospice for end of life care. Due to the partnership working between and hospice and neonatal services babies are now able to be rapidly discharged, which enables many out of hospital special memories to be created. For one family we created their baby’s first Christmas despite it being Summer and one mother who had dreamed of sitting in their nursery they had so proudly prepared was able to rock her baby to sleep, which is where she died peacefully, surrounded by her family.
Supporting families in the antenatal phase has been instrumental in good parallel birth planning, this allows families time to think about their wishes and plan for different eventualities prior to the birth. Through this work I quickly realised that most of the families I supported in pregnancy did not attend a “routine” antenatal class so turned up at the birth not knowing what to expect. Recently I have set up an antenatal class which covers the clinical side of labour but concentrates more on the holistic aspect of giving birth, bearing in mind their difficult situation, preparing for birth and death. The group provides them with a safe space to “tell their story” if they so wish with professional support on hand. We also offer Complementary therapies in pregnancy which has been invaluable to some in reducing anxiety and improving a most needed night sleep.
Knowing time is precious, memory making is a fundamental part of my role. This often brings a little light to a difficult time, getting parents messy painting the toes of their precious baby when often they haven’t even held them for the first time. Memory making has recently been extended into creating precious memories in pregnancy with heart beat recordings and professional bump photography as sadly for some parents them may not meet their baby alive.
I feel immensely proud the service has gone from strength to strength with the development of tailored antenatal classes, support at births, introduction of a baby group specific for babies with complex health needs and a Butterfly Babies bereavement coffee morning. Recently we were successful in securing funding from Liverpool CCG which has enabled us to dedicate a counsellor and a bereavement co-ordinator to the perinatal team.
For those babies that sadly die, families are offered a choice of taking their baby home with specialist equipment and the support of our bereavement team, or to rest in our butterfly suite at Claire House. This provides families time to say goodbye, in a peaceful and comforting children’s bedroom, away from the busy hospital with bleeping machines and other babies crying.
Referring to my opening question “how do you do your job?” my answer always is……………“how do I not?”
What Others Have Said
Kat has built amazing collaborative partnerships at the tertiary Liverpool Women’s Hospital and due to this work she has seen a 262% increase in referrals for palliative care planning during the perinatal and neonatal phase since 2014.
Close friends of mine have recently lost a child of 15mths. He had an illness from birth my friends said Claire House had been amazing!! So good luck to you Kate and a big thankyou to all you angels that work in Claire House ❤️
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What a wonderful person you are, being so supportive in such an emotional role, hats of to you and all your colleagues for the amazing work you do x
kat is a lovely lady massive heart and big hugs
Amazing ladies love people that care this much xx
Kat is a very talented palliative care nurse who was always a pleasure to work alongside.
Her knowledge is exemplary and she is such a warm and caring person.
Kat was instrumental in the care our son received during his 9 years especially in the final 8 days.
A wonderful person who deserves this award
I met Kat a Year ago .. she has supported myself and my family during a very difficult time . Kat you are one of life’s super heroes and I’m so happy I met you
Xxx
A true inspiration!
Kat is a true inspiration.
Voting for Katrina Williams
Wonderful woman
Good luck Kat
I’ve had the pleasure working alongside Kat for many years at the hospice she is such a calm lovely lady and is doing an amazing job to help families through their saddest times x
What a fantastic person giving a fantastic service
What an absolute wonderful woman xx
Her work and contribution to the families is priceless, each and every family are eternally grateful for what she does.
Angel on earth ❤
Well done Katrina a very worthy nominee for amazing work that you do and the people’s lives you have made such massive positive difference to over the years , fingers and toes crossed for you !
Kat is amazing at what she does, having sadly being in the need of her support with our daughter Emmalyn, we are so grateful she does the job she does as she made a difficult situation that bit easier with her lovely, caring and kind nature.
Very well deserved vote from me ,
Kat was amazing with our family gave us support and guidance throughout, after loosing one child and another child had same diagnosis she guided up step by step when as a family we were in such a dark place and lost xxxxxxx
Such an amazing professional to develop close contact, supportive and care for the parallel transition between Clare house and the Liverpool Women’s Hospital Neonatal Unit. Working along side families from the very early days perfoming ‘memory making’ within their precious early days and weeks and also for those siblings too of those babies who are critically ill or born with life threatening abnormalities wether the outcome would be positive or unfortunately a tragic situation. There are now far more holistic support that extends our care as a nurse that we couldn’t really offer but now Kat is there and can facilitate these most important times when families need every bit of support possible.
A fantastic nurse who I know does amazing work with close family friends .
Kat does such an amazing job for such incredible children xxx
What an amazing lady
Fantastic work by Kat and the whole team at Claire House
Thanks for all you do, especially for Eva Ebbrell my grandaughter.
Don’t know her personally but any one that does this job gets my vote.❤️
Amazing work
Such an amazing job for amazing children! My auntie kat works so hard and loves her job so much! A well deserved vote from me!
Kat is fully committed to her role and alongside the amazing work she does with families she also supports trainee student nurses within her area. She readily shares her expertise and is very supportive. Kat is someone who goes above and beyond and I would love to see her win this category
what a fantastic job absolutely amazing god bless you
Amazing ❤️
❤️
She’s simply the best ❤️
Will never forget, thank you
❤kaila❤
Good luck.
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An amazing woman doing an amazing job. !!
An amazing woman doing an amazing job!!
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❤️ how lucky is this world to have people like you in it. Good luck
Kat is inspirational, caring and unassuming. She is passionate about her job and the families she cares for. In a nutshell, Kat is fantastic!
Amazing lady
An angel on earth
Great to recognise someone who does such an important job – good luck ?
I have been fortunate enough to work alongside Kat- as a volunteer for a short period of time and have witnessed the amazing interaction she has and the sensitive way she approaches all who come into contact with her. Parents and staff put their complete trust in her- and she never lets them down. She is truly a one off. Sheila x
This most remarkable and dedicated lady really deserves to win this award. Please let her. The testimonies speak for themselves, thank you, Marie x
Wow….
Kat is a superhuman combined with compassion and love for the children and their parents and families……
Recognition is so well deserved….
Thank you, Kat ❤️
Inspirational
Utterly inspirational!