Next steps: towards child-focused nursing

Background: Family centred care is widely promoted as a model for children 19s health care in many countries throughout the world and in all spheres of children 19s nursing education, management, policy and practice. However, research has failed to show that clinical practice uses the partnership model, central to family centred care. Thesis of this paper: In this paper we suggest that, in part, the failure of family centred care, as a project, is due to the lack of attention paid to the cultural, social and political context in which children 19s health care is delivered. Discussion: We propose that the concepts of cultural safety and ethical symmetry can be used to locate family and child centred care within the complexity of children 19s lives, as lived with illness. Implications for practice: of cultural safety and ethical symmetry can be applied in paediatrics and may be more effective than family-centred care