How to support a client whose child has a life limited condition

  • How do you support and what should you say to a family client whose child has a life-limited condition?
  • Occasionally you may find yourself advising clients who have children with severe health conditions that are life-limiting.
  • This situation requires a carefully balanced mix of empathy, thoughtfulness and of course, great advice for incredibly difficult circumstances.
  • We turned to Ed Kemp, a campaigner and Family Support Adviser to help us understand how we can best engage with these clients.

So as their adviser, what can you do to help?

  1. When planning bookings, don’t be offended or surprised if parents don’t want to meet in person as this may cause disruption to their child and family. Be assured that usually parents don’t have control over the reasons for any short notice cancellations. Please be as flexible and understanding as possible – it takes a lot to attend what might seem like a simple meeting.
  2. Parents of children with complex needs may appear defensive or sceptical which could be for a number of reasons, such as: lack of physical or emotional capacity; exhaustion; the child’s illness; no respite; constant battles with local authorities. Please be patient and find the best way to support them – they’ll most likely accept your offer of help in their own time, but that might not be until something else has been resolved.
  3. Being a parent of a life limited child, can mean thinking about a child’s future differently on a daily, weekly or yearly basis, especially when they are poorly. It could go from thinking 2-3 years ahead one day to thinking about the coming days/weeks the next. Just be open to understanding that finding the right times to talk about a child’s future will be difficult; but not because a parent doesn’t want to talk/think about it. Sometimes they just can’t focus that far ahead due to the current circumstances.

These situations can be devastating for a family. As their trusted adviser, you have the opportunity to support them in many different ways. It could be helping them create a great plan based on a vision that is very different to other families; it might be taking the pressure off them by helping them organise and arrange things for them; it might just be accepting that their needs are very different.

If you have been affected by one of your clients losing a child, do consider taking time and seeking help for the impact it has had on you too.