Information about the short breaks we provide for families currently accessing our services.
Overnight breaks
Overnight breaks for your child are offered at Demelza Kent or South East London where they will be looked after by our specialist nursing and care teams. Children and young people who come for a break may also have the chance to enjoy the facilities at Demelza (subject to availability) which include sensory areas, gaming consoles, art and music therapies. Facilities at Demelza Kent also include an adapted outside play area, a cinema room, hydro pool and soft play.
Day care in our hospices
Day care for your child is also offered at Demelza Kent or South East London. They will be looked after by our specialist nursing and care teams. Our experienced teams will provide one-to-one, individualised support, giving them the opportunity to enjoy new experiences and take part in activities tailored to their needs.
Day care in the home
Our community nursing teams provide support in the family home across Kent, East Sussex and South East London. You can request sessions lasting between 2-4 hours where one of our specially trained healthcare assistants will visit you to play and support your child or young person in the home environment. It may also be possible for the healthcare assistant to take your child out for the session. We will personalise each session with fun activities and sensory aids, centred around your child’s specific needs.
Useful information
Short breaks are requested several months in advance of the stay. You will need to complete the short break request form online which will be sent to you by email or post twice a year.
When completing the form please provide a selection of up to three dates; we aim to offer you one of your preferred choices however this may not always be possible. There is a minimum of a two night stay for residential breaks due to the amount of time it can take parents, carers and the nursing team to prepare for each admission to ensure safe clinical care is provided. If you have no preference for dates, please write ‘no preference’ in the comments box on the form.
After the closing date, we will allocate spaces on a fair and equitable basis. Once this is complete, we will be in touch with you again to let you know what dates we have allocated your family. If we have not been able to allocate one of your preferred dates, we will do our best to offer you an alternative.
You will be contacted again around two weeks prior to your short break, to answer any queries that you have regarding the admission process and a registered nurse will complete your child’s care plan with you. Completing the care plans can take between 30 minutes – two hours depending on when your child last stayed with us or if there have been any changes to your child’s care since their last stay.
When allocating breaks, we will prioritise any young people approaching their 18th birthday as our nursing services are only able to offer care for children and young people up to the age of 18. Our transition team can offer advice, information, practical support and signposting up to age 25.
At this time, we cannot consider any change of date requests due to the high demand for short breaks during school holidays and weekends. Please be reassured that we consider all short break requests and do our best to provide an equitable offer. Thank you for understanding the time it takes to schedule these breaks with the challenge of meeting everyone's preferences.
If you would like to cancel the allocated short break, please let us know by emailing careadministration@demelza.org.uk with as much notice as possible.
If you would like to request transport to/ from the hospice, please contact the practical support team by emailing practicalsupport@demelza.org.uk or fill out the practical support transport request form.
We ask that anyone that has had a case of diarrhoea or vomiting within the past 48 hours or is currently displaying symptoms of a respiratory illness does not visit a Demelza site.
If any of these symptoms are present during a short break visit, you will be asked to collect your child/ren and take them home if possible.
If you are being visited by a member of the community care team and experience any of these symptoms, please contact them to rearrange the visit.
For any queries relating to short breaks or other services in general please call our service administration team on 01795 845270 (10am-4pm, Monday – Friday) or email careadministration@demelza.org.uk.
For emotional support, social support, therapies or family events, please call our family support team on 01795 845280 (10am-4pm, Monday - Friday) or email familysupportdepartment@demelza.org.uk.
If you need to contact us during your child's short break in the hospice, the nursing team can be contacted on 020 8859 9800 (South East London) or 01795 845201 (Kent).
We will do our best to accommodate this, however, please note this may not always be possible.
If your child has not been to the hospice to access a short break before, a parent or carer will be required to stay for your child’s first night or you may come for a day care session with your child before their overnight break. This is to allow our staff to get to know your child and for you and your child to feel comfortable with our staff.
We do our best to accommodate date preferences, however as some dates are more popular than others, this is not always possible. We work hard to ensure the fairest possible offer for all families.
We will always prioritise end of life care and sometimes this may sadly mean that we must cancel bookings that have been made for short breaks. We will only do this if necessary and with as much notice as we can, therefore all short break bookings are subject to cancellation at short notice. To avoid disappointment, we suggest that you do not plan anything that cannot be cancelled/rearranged.
Also, in case of an emergency or extenuating circumstance, an adult with parental responsibility must be no more than two hours away from the hospice should you need to collect your child.
If your break is cancelled it is worth noting that we also provide a wide range of accessible and flexible family support services at Demelza. To find out more about the other support, therapies, events and bookable facilities we provide then please visit the Family Area of our website at: www.demelza.org.uk/how-we-help/services/bookable-experiences
If you are planning a holiday more than a two-hour drive away from the hospice then please email careadministration@demelza.org.uk at least two weeks prior to the break. They will ask you to fill out a delegation of care form which will need to be agreed by the lead nurse.
Please ensure that you arrive promptly to avoid any delay in admission.
On arrival, your child’s care plans and medication will be checked by a registered nurse so please ensure that prescribed medications are labelled correctly with a pharmacy label which clearly shows your child’s name. If the dose on the bottle differs from the current prescribed dose, please bring confirmation of the dose change with you i.e. confirmation by email/letter from the healthcare professional that changed the dose.
Please check the medication does not expire before the end of your child’s short break. You will also need to bring all medical equipment relevant to your child’s care. We will be unable to administer the medication without this information and may have to cancel your short break.
If you or your child are bringing a smartphone, iPad or any other similar device on site, we respectfully ask that you do not take any photos or videos of other families or children.
Whilst on our premises, connection to the Demelza WIFI is recommended. Demelza WIFI will block inappropriate internet searches and content being accessed or downloaded via the internet. However, the way your device is set up and managed (i.e. with parental controls), will dictate what your child/young person is able to view, access or download to the device and the Demelza WIFI would not block this. If you want your child to remain on their own data, you should be aware that no content can be blocked by our IT system.
Get in touch
We offer advocacy and practical, emotional and social support to parents, carers, siblings and grandparents. The family support helpline is open Monday to Friday, 10am-4pm or you can email us and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.