Background In April 2022, St Giles Hospice and Acorns Children’s Hospice collaborated to ensure that babies, children and young adults could access the vital day services of Acorns Children’s Hospice whilst their building underwent a refurbishment. Together for Short Lives (2016) acknowledges that adult hospices can often be very daunting places for young adults due to the increased number of patients that are seen, many will be at the end of their lives and the hospice environments are very different.

Aim Review learning opportunities of an adult hospice and a children’s hospice working alongside each other.

Method A collaborative partnership was formed between the two hospices that enabled Acorns access to patient rooms and office rooms to ensure that patients and their families were able to continue to access respite and end of life support during a six month refurbishment of the Acorn’s in-patient unit. To ensure that this was a true collaboration, a working group was set up that consisted of representatives from each hospice to look at how the two hospices could coincide within the same building. Representatives included staff nurses, physiotherapists, directors, catering, volunteers and facilities. Weekly meetings were instigated to look at room requirements, how to embed staff, governance arrangements and communication both internally and externally. The meetings will continue throughout the duration of the collaboration to capture any learning as time progresses.

Results It is hoped that when the six months end in October 2022 that there will be a number of learning points:

• Increased awareness of young adults’ needs when transitioning into an adult hospice.

• Review of services to make them more accessible to young adults.

• Greater collaboration between adult and children’s hospices.

Conclusion This is an innovative partnership focused solely on maintaining access to in-patient hospice care for children. Review will transform how we design services in the future for transitioning young adults.