The Louis Dundas Centre for Palliative Care at GOSH

The Louis Dundas Centre at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) is a specialist palliative care team. We bring together clinical expertise, psychosocial support and academic research to ensure children and their families receive the highest standard of care.

Palliative care aims to achieve the best quality of life possible for children and their families living with a life-threatening or life-shortening illness.

The Louis Dundas Centre cares for children and families from diagnosis or recognition of a life-threatening or life-shortening illness. The team provides specialist support throughout your child’s illness, often alongside disease-specific treatments and always working in partnership with other professionals involved in your child’s care.

We offer a multidisciplinary team approach to palliative care, with clinical, psychosocial and research teams working together. The Louis Dundas Centre is a specialist service, so we train doctors and other professionals as well as having visitors who spend time with the team for experience.

If you would prefer not to have trainees or team visitors present when we see you and your child, please tell us. This will not affect your child's care in any way.

The clinical team comprises consultants, doctors and clinical nurse specialists supported by data management and administrative staff. The type of support you and your child may need is likely to vary throughout your child’s illness, but could include:

• Expert clinical assessment and management of complex symptoms
• Support when faced with difficult decisions and treatment choices
• Receiving care in the place you and your child feel is the best place, which could be at home, in a children’s hospice or in hospital
• Access to 24 hour telephone support 
• Liaison between GOSH and local services to help coordinate your child’s care. This could include liaison with your child’s school or nursery.
• Providing information about local services, including children’s hospices and support organisations
• Accessing bereavement support through GOSH or local services 

The psychosocial team comprises a family support officer, social worker and psychologist.

We understand that a child’s illness or condition can affect the whole family in a variety of ways. It can be a particularly stressful time and the psychosocial team is available to offer practical and emotional support to you, your child and family.

If you would like to have an informal discussion with the psychosocial team please call the Social Work and Psychology Department on 020 7829 8896 or alternatively speak with your GOSH consultant or nurse. There is also separate information about psychosocial support available.

The research team is interested in learning about your views and experiences. If you would like to know more about the research team and our current studies, please visit our website . If you are interested in taking part in a study please call the research team on 020 7905 2143.

At GOSH, we aim to provide the highest quality of care for your child. To do this, we need to keep records about your child, their health, the care they have had in the past and our plans for the future. We may also need to share these records with other teams and organisations involved in your child’s care. Your child’s information may also be used for some other purposes, such as to check the type and quality of care we provide and to ensure that we offer the best service to the greatest number of people.

We assume that you are happy for our staff to use your child’s information in this way when you let us look after him or her.

If you would like to discuss further how we use your child’s information, or would like to limit how it is used, please talk to a member of the clinical team. Further details about the use of patient information held by GOSH are available on our website. .