Junior health minister Ivan Lewis has called on strategic health authorities to invest in Diana nursing teams, as part of a new framework on paediatric palliative care services. The

government last week pledged £20m towards children’s hospices and a new strategy that prioritises children’s palliative care for SHAs. Mr Lewis said he hoped the strategy would encourage

SHAs to create new Diana teams. ‘We should be expanding across the NHS the values that were the motivation in creating them,’ he said. Eight Diana teams specialising in the care of children

who are seriously ill were set up in 1999 but only four now survive – in Salford, Newham, Cornwall and West Kent. Rosa Monckton, ambassador for the Association of Children’s Palliative Care,