Overnight Respite

At Claire House, we realise that caring for a baby, child or young adult is emotionally challenging and physically exhausting and that is why we offer overnight respite.

Overnight respite care is where your baby, child or young adult comes to the hospice and stays for a few days. This can either be with yourselves and siblings, allowing you to be mum and dad and letting the care team take over the clinical care or, your child can stay by themselves allowing you time to build your resilience to carry on caring.

How does overnight respite work?

Once your baby, child or young adult has been accepted for overnight respite, they will be allocated seven nights every six months. This is usually a four-night stay and a three-night stay, or it can be a seven-night stay if requested. We primarily allocate dates to yourselves, but we always try to help with special occasions you may have.

Whilst your baby, child or young adult is staying with us, they will be allocated a member of the Care Team as their lead contact. The Care Team consists of Hospice Lead Nurses, Hospice Clinical Nurses, Nursing Associates, Assistant Practitioners and Healthcare Support Workers.

Key Benefits of Overnight Respite

• Support to the baby, child, young adult and family
• Time for family to be family
• Building relationships
• Memory making
• Access to physiotherapy and complementary therapies during a child or young adult's stay
• Building resilience to carry on
• Parents and family can catch up on much needed sleep
• You time…. 

Planned Respite

When your baby, child or young adult is with Claire House for planned respite, they will have one-to-one care during the day and overnight there will be a group of staff looking after all children. Your child will have an individual care plan, letting the Care Team know all about them, their care needs, likes and dislikes. The care plan is created with yourselves and a member of the referrals team.

A typical day during a respite stay can be spending time in the art room with the play team listening to a sensory story, messy play or meeting a Disney character. There can also be time in the lounges chilling and having a movie afternoon, time in the hydrotherapy pool with our physio team or a massage from our complimentary therapy team.

Emergency Respite

We recognise that emergency respite is extremely important to families when they need additional support.

Emergency respite can include stays for symptom management, care package breakdowns, family bereavement or if you are struggling and need some support.

Emergency respite is available to all families, but we have to offer it in priority of need. If we cannot help straight away, we will always try and help and see if other services can offer support.