Healthcare personnel found it challenging to judge what was in the child’s best interest. The child’s right to autonomy and involvement was often not heeded, and the child was rarely included in the decision-making process.

The bereaved felt that they maintained a bond with their deceased family member through diaries that had been kept for the patients during their stay in ICU. The diaries also helped impart structure on a chaotic time and made it easier for the bereaved to vent their feelings.

It is challenging to treat children in a general intensive care unit intended for adults. Good training, good cooperation, and fulfilling children’s needs are valuable measures.

The ALERT training programme raised the competence level of healthcare personnel in the municipal health service and is likely to have increased their job satisfaction.

Close relatives help patients to live at home longer and are an important resource for the welfare state. But they can also contribute to an unfair allocation of nursing home beds by advocating for their own family members.

Mothers who engaged with the ‘New families’ home visit programme, had more frequent contact with child health centres. But more than a third of all the mothers reported that they had received inadequate information from public authorities about the child health centre’s services.