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Too often our systems see a patient, a parent, an employee, a sibling or a pupil, but rarely a family, and we need our NHS to see the full picture. There is a clear gap in our safety net when parents of seriously ill children are left without the co-ordinated financial, practical and emotional support they need. The message from those with lived experience is that, in these scenarios, parents find themselves passed from pillar to post, endlessly repeating the devastating reality they are living through, which compounds their trauma. The stress and complexity this adds to the burden that parents and carers already face when caring for a seriously ill child contributes to longer-term health impacts for families in a way that we cannot ignore. A linked record cohort study of more than 35,000 mothers found high incidences of depression, cardiovascular disease and death among mothers of children with life-limiting conditions.