Standards of Care for Children with Cancer

Childhood Cancer International – Europe (CCI Europe) and the European Society for Paediatric Oncology (SIOPE) are proud to announce the release of the revised European Standards of Care for Children and Adolescents with Cancer, a milestone in advancing childhood cancer care across Europe. These updated Standards aim to reduce inequalities and improve outcomes for all children diagnosed with cancer, regardless of where they live in Europe.

The updated Standards are the result of a four-year collaboration involving 45 patient advocates and healthcare professionals from 22 countries across Europe. They collaborated in specialised working groups to review and update each chapter, ensuring the Standards reflect the latest evidence and best practices. The revised document addresses not only medical treatment, but also supportive care, psychosocial support, rehabilitation, survivorship, and equitable access to innovative therapies. By defining clear requirements for multidisciplinary teams, facilities, and care pathways, the Standards provide a roadmap for healthcare systems to deliver high-quality care to all children and adolescents with cancer.

The Standards comprise 11 chapters, each co-authored by a senior paediatric oncologist, a young professional, and a patient advocate from CCI Europe. This approach ensured that both medical and human aspects of care are fully represented, grounded in evidence and lived experience.

Read the Revised European Standards of Care for Children and Adolescents with Cancer

Past Publication

Since 2008, SIOPE led the preparation of a very important document, the ‘European Standards of care for Children with Cancer’. Widely recognised as a reference document to evaluate progress in drug development, treatment and care in the various paediatric cancer treatment centres all over the continent, the Standards of Care suggest the ideal requirements for every centre specialised in the treatment of children with cancer.

Developed together with Professor Jerzy Kowalczyk, the Polish Ministry of Health and the Polish ‘Communication without Barriers Foundation’, this document has been created after a first Europe-wide survey on the existing national situations of paediatric haemato-oncology wards. In 2009 paediatric oncologists, parent’s organisations and policy-makers attended a high-level conference in Warsaw, where discussions resulted in a first draft of the ‘Standards of Care’ document, integrated thereafter as a deliverable in the ‘European Partnership for Action Against Cancer’ (EPAAC) project, a unique partnership bringing together stakeholders from the entire cancer continuum in Europe to share knowledge and expertise to prevent and control the burden of cancer.

A SIOPE survey in the EPAAC framework showed that a wide disparity exists in the implementation of these standards of care across different European countries (J. Kowalczyk et al., ‘Towards reducing inequalities: European Standards of Care for Children with Cancer’’, EJC, Volume 50, Issue 3, Pages 481-485, February 2014).

The Standards are now available in 22 languages.

Standards of Care for Children with Cancer

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