Family life

Objectives: Describe how parents prioritize parenting tasks and goals for their seriously ill and healthy children Illustrate how the process of trading-off one child's needs to meet those of another can contribute to parents' distress in serious pediatric illness.

Background: Parents caring for children with complex and long‐term conditions at home take on responsibility for technical health‐care procedures that may cause their child distress. Little evidence exists about parents’ experience of this specific aspect of their caring role.

Aims: To explore and understand parents’ experiences of administering distressing health‐care procedures as part of caring for their child at home.

This research provides a three-way perspective on the experiences & needs of children who are living with & caring for parents with severe & enduring mental illness. The views of children, parents & key workers were sought in order to provide deeper insight into the needs of families & the nature of interfamilial relationships, as well as the relationships between service users & providers. Child protection & medical research has long proposed a link between parental mental illness & the risk to children of abuse, neglect & developmental delay.