Tender mercies: increasing access to hospice services for children with life-threatening conditions.

This article describes the initiation of the Children's Hospice and Palliative Care Coalition, an organization that emerged from the concern of two women for the unique needs of children with life-threatening conditions. The Coalition, based in California, was inspired to improve care for children with life-threatening conditions and their families by the 2002 Institute of Medicine report When Children Die:... (which was printed in 2003: ). Its most recent work has been to advance legislative initiatives to develop, implement, and evaluate a pilot project waiver to provide a federally funded pediatric care benefit.