Shirley Tart writes about the tragic loss of David Cameron’s young son.

David and Samantha Cameron pictured at their London home with children, Nancy, Arthur and Ivan. The family photograph was used by the Conservative Party leader on his 2008 Christmas card.

The birth of Ivan changed David and Samantha Cameron forever – he says it was like being hit by a freight train.

Something with which so many families identify as their hopes and dreams for a new baby change beyond recognition.

• See also: David Cameron’s son dies

Severely disabled Ivan was only six but had been in and out of accident and emergency services for most of his short life.

He needed 24-hour-care because of seizures and other ongoing symptoms of the rare form of cerebral

palsy with which he was diagnosed at just six days old.

For so many families in similar circumstances, the children’s hospice movement makes all the difference. The respite care it now offers gives the parents and other children a break.

Everyone involved with Hope House at Morda knows and understands that only too well. As a patron of the hospice and having met so many families over the years, I know that every family it helps, whatever their background, has in common a beloved child whose life is limited.

The Cameron family loss runs as deep and will be unbearably painful.

The little boy was central to their lives and while they may have had easier access to more help than many, they have always paid tribute to the NHS which has looked after Ivan so well.

But for hundreds of families caring for and loving children with similar and life-threatening conditions, the extra arm of hospice care has literally saved them.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who lost his own first child, says the loss is something no parent should have to bear. But parents do.

That’s why places such as Hope House are also there to help support families for as long as it takes after a beloved child has died.

The Rev Sally Day, now curate at St Andrew’s church in Shifnal, was first director of Acorns in Birmingham, the world’s second children’s hospice.

And it was she who went to see the Peachey family from Bayston Hill at one of the moments of their despair and offered them the chance to take their tiny daughter, Hope, to Acorns.

That proved an unbelievable blessing for the family and sowed the seeds which led to Shropshire’s Hope House opening nearly 14 years ago and being named after that baby girl.

On hearing the sad news, chief executive of Hope House, David Featherstone, says: “Everyone is saddened to hear of the sudden death of David Cameron’s son Ivan. Parents of children with profound disabilities live daily with the fear of such an occurrence and it is an ever present factor in their lives.

“All of us at Hope House, including the families for whom we care, offer our sincere condolences to the Cameron family at this difficult time.”

In these circumstances, an increasing part of the work done by Hope House is supporting young children who have experienced the loss of a brother or sister which as David says is “a particularly difficult and sensitive but very important area.”

Arthur and Nancy Cameron are younger than Ivan, but will still need the help and comfort appropriate to them.