Advancing Excellence in Children's Complex Care
A national institute providing paediatric-specific governance, standards, and system leadership to strengthen the safety, quality, and accountability of children's complex care.
Why the Marula Institute exists
The Marula Institute exists to ensure that every child with complex health needs receives safe, consistent, clinically governed and compassionate care across every environment in which they live, learn, and receive support.
We are committed to reducing variation, strengthening governance, and embedding standards that advance excellence in children's complex care.
Addressing variation and gaps in care
Across the UK, children with complex medical needs often encounter:
Existing national guidance provides essential elements of commissioning and service design, but there is no single, unified, paediatric-specific practice standard that sets expectations for day-to-day complex care across home, school, hospice, respite and community settings.
The Marula Institute was established to fill this gap by providing a coherent, evidence-based benchmark that complements national frameworks and strengthens the entire system of care.
A 10-component benchmark of excellence
The Marula Standard® integrates clinical governance, relational practice, staff development, safeguarding, and system accountability into one cohesive framework:
This Standard supports commissioners, NHS providers, schools, hospices and homecare organisations to deliver safe, skilled, relationally intelligent and consistently governed care.
Practical support for systems, services and families
The Marula Institute partners with commissioners, providers, professionals and families to embed The Marula Standard® into everyday practice.
Supporting organisations to understand, adopt, and embed The Marula Standard® across their services.
Helping systems strengthen oversight, accountability, quality assurance and organisational culture.
Creating paediatric-specific training, competency frameworks, and emotionally safe supervision models.
Embedding family voice into governance, planning and evaluation, including parent representation at board level.
Generating evidence, reflective learning, and continuous improvement across multi-agency children's care.
Clinically led, multi-disciplinary, shaped by lived experience
The Marula Institute is clinically led and supported by a Board of Expert Advisors comprising:
- senior paediatric clinicians
- safeguarding and governance specialists
- educators and researchers
- leaders in system improvement
- parent representatives (currently being appointed)
This multi-disciplinary advisory structure ensures that our work remains clinically robust, academically grounded, ethically sound, and shaped by lived experience.
A national expectation of excellence
We envision a UK where every child with complex medical needs experiences:
- safety through clear governance
- competence through trained and confident staff
- dignity through relationally attuned practice
- equity regardless of geography or provider
- partnership through genuine family inclusion
- consistency across all care environments
The Marula Institute positions excellence in complex care not as an aspiration - but as a national expectation.
Partner with the Marula Institute
We welcome partnership with commissioners, providers, professionals, researchers, families, and all those invested in improving children's complex care.
Follow our launch journey and join our growing network. Together, we can advance excellence in children's complex care across the UK.
Email: info@marulainstitute.org
Phone: +44 (0)777 245 7744
For formal enquiries, partnership discussions or to express interest in The Marula Standard®, please contact us via email in the first instance.