Children's Palliative Care
Coalition of Michigan
Our mission is to provide resources for, and to advocate for, medical professionals, volunteers and families caring for children with life-limiting illnesses, and to ensure the availability of compassionate, comprehensive care across the State of Michigan.
ADVOCACY
At our November 2023 Annual Conference, representatives of Michigan's Children's Special Health Care Services updated the participants on the progress toward finalizing the program called "Targeted Case Management" for children with medical complexity. This program has been a priority of our coalition's advocacy efforts for several years and is on the path for adoption. It will enable the expansion and creation of improved services and care management for hundreds of our state's children who have multiple medical and surgical sub-specialists and frequent hospital stays.
LEGISLATION
Update on Legislation DNR orders in Michigan schools
We discussed in our March newsletter attempts to legitimize the status and implementation of Do-Not-Resuscitate (DNR) orders in all schools in the State of Michigan for children who are terminally ill with life-threatening disorders but are not actively dying.
This was done by the introduction of 3 bills in the House - HB 5417, 5418 and 5419. The author, Willy’s mother, explains the family’s agonizing decision to include a DNR order as part of his care plan and the devastation they felt when they discovered that his school would not honor that order.
Today, we're pleased to tell you that this bill, in addition to HB 5418 and 5419 have all passed the House almost unanimously! They are now moving on to the Senate
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5417 Allows a parent or guardian to execute a DNR on behalf of a minor child. This is important because although biological parents with custody were always able to do this, guardians were not. Many times children with terminal special needs end up with a guardian instead of a parent and they need to be able to make the same decisions.
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5418 amends the State of Michigan School Code to ensure that all districts will honor DNR’s and also provides school staff with immunity if they are acting under the letter of the DNR.
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5419 amends the State of Michigan Do Not Resuscitate order including verbiage for minors.
For the latest NHPCO ChiPPS e-journal issue, please follow the link. There are a great deal of interesting articles and legislative updates that are worth spending time with (DNR in Michigan schools being one of them).