Justin Michael Ingerman Center for Palliative Care
![Beautiful family outside with Father, Mother, and baby looking at necklace containing ashes of her sister.](/sites/default/files/styles/landscape_150_3x2_1100x733_1x/public/2024-05/Photo-Hero-PALCare-2624X1720_0.jpg?itok=Bj5ZlTlO)
The Justin Michael Ingerman Center for Palliative Care at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) helps support children with serious or life-limiting conditions and their families. We offer your family the highest level of clinical care and psychosocial support. Our goal is to relieve pain and stress and meet the emotional, social and spiritual needs of your child and family.
In addition to pediatric palliative care, CHOP offers perinatal palliative care services for families dealing with the diagnosis of a life-threatening birth defect. This team will help you plan for and cope with the remainder of your pregnancy and the time around delivery.
How we serve you
The consulting team, known as the Pediatric Advanced Care Team (PACT), supports you by:
- Facilitating communication between your child, your family and your child's healthcare providers
- Helping you make decisions that best reflect your child's and your family's values and preferences
- Improving your child's and your family's quality of life
- Improving the management of symptoms
- Providing emotional, social, spiritual and bereavement support
![Two women sitting holding up a ceramic memory plate with handprints made by a family where the child is now deceased](/sites/default/files/styles/landscape_150_3x2_160x107_1x/public/2024-05/Photo-Team-PALCare-2624X1720.jpg?itok=bgf-dvyp)
Meet your team
Every person on the palliative care team has the same goal: to support your entire family and help you make decisions that reflect your values.
![Smiling CHOP patient holding shopping bag](/sites/default/files/styles/square_100_160x160_1x/public/2024-06/Photo-Foundation-Shop-for-Chop-Become-Partner-Hero-2624x1720-v01.jpg?h=b840d9cf&itok=b_4zmn0L)
Our research
Our research focuses on how hospitals can better support families facing difficult decisions about a child's care, and how regional systems of care could better provide palliative care services to children and their families.
![Concerned mother looking for resources sitting at laptop in kitchen](/sites/default/files/styles/landscape_150_3x2_160x107_1x/public/2024-05/Photo-Resources-PALCare-2624X1720.jpg?itok=_opfsKXc)
Palliative care resources
We have gathered resources that can help children and families who are coping with life-threatening conditions.
Community outreach and advocacy
We believe the best system of pediatric palliative care spans the continuum from home and community care to hospital care and back.
We help coordinate the biannual Partners in Pediatric Care Program, a free education day that connects end-of-life care programs with community-based hospice and home-care agencies. We also participate in other outreach activities to help advance the quality of care for children living with life-threatening conditions.
For more information about the Partners in Pediatric Care Program, contact Gwenn LaRagione, RN, BSN.
Your donation changes lives
A gift of any size helps us support families during trying times.
![In the hospital, a boy in a wheelchair, wearing blue, is embraced by a smiling older woman, offering loving support](/sites/default/files/styles/landscape_150_3x2_160x107_1x/public/2024-05/Photo-Donate-PALCare-2624X1720.jpg?itok=lznxlWPe)