After her son’s painful death, a Cheshire mother highlights Connecticut’s pediatric hospice gap

10/28/25 at 02:00 AM

After her son’s painful death, a Cheshire mother highlights Connecticut’s pediatric hospice gap
New Haven Register, Norwalk, CT; by Cris Villalonga-Vivoni; 10/26/25
Carolyn Torello believes that no parent should outlive their children, yet that became her reality. ... As his condition worsened, the family faced his impending death without the support of pediatric palliative or hospice care. No provider, she said, seemed to know how to help or where to begin. He died at 15 years old in 2021. ... In 2020, an estimated 7,800 children in Connecticut were living with complex medical conditions that limited their life expectancy and could have benefited from palliative or hospice care, according to data from the National Survey of Children's Health. ... Torello thinks that if Michael had access to hospice care, he could have died with greater dignity, and their family could have focused on simply being together. ... Efforts to create a more formalized pediatric palliative care system have been underway since 2024, led by a state-commissioned working group that will make recommendations to the legislature on potential reforms.
Editor's Note: Editor's Note: This article puts forth significant information (with links) for all states, for all hospices. Having served on the firmly rooted Pediatrics Team of Hospice & Palliative Care of Louisville (begun in 1980) for four years (1997-2001), I take for granted how some type of pediatric hospice care needs to be available in every region. For related articles we have recently posted:

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