Children’s critical illness benefit
The last thing you’ll want to think about is your child being critically ill, but it’s worth considering how you’d manage financially.
If as a parent your child is critically ill, you or your partner are likely to need some time off work to care for them. Children’s benefit within critical illness is designed to help towards removing some of the financial pressure enabling you to focus on your child during that difficult time.
This article gives a brief summary of how critical illness works, followed by information around what children’s benefit is and how it works, what this can help cover, and some claims information.
What’s critical illness cover?
It’s a type of insurance that pays out a lump sum if you get a serious illness that’s defined by the policy, within the policy term. Depending on the definition, the payment might be on diagnosis, when the condition is of a specific severity, or when you have treatment or surgery.
You pay monthly premiums for a set amount of time. After a successful claim, you'll receive a payout to help you cope financially, while you focus on your treatment. The policy only pays the full cover amount once and ends after that. It has no cash‐in value at any time.
Critical illness policies don't cover every condition or injury, so always check what is and isn’t covered in the policy documents before you buy. Most critical illness policies have a survival period after the diagnosis, this is usually 10 to 14 days dependent on the product. Our Critical Illness Plan covers 52 conditions, this product does not pay out on death. For more information, please see policy conditions (PDF 203 KB).
What's children's critical illness benefit?
If you’re thinking of taking out critical illness cover with us, you'll automatically get children’s critical illness benefit included as standard.
You don’t have to add it on, or pay extra, and it isn’t a standalone insurance policy. Even if you don’t have children when you take out the policy, it might be something you later value. If your family grows within the term of the policy, and your child becomes critically ill with a condition we cover, provided the child survives for at least 10 days, you will be able to make a claim.
How does children's critical illness benefit work?
If you need to make a claim for your child under this benefit, it’s considered a partial claim. This means your policy won’t end after a successful claim, and the full cover amount could still be paid out in the future.
You can only use this benefit once for each child you have, but after a successful claim for one child, the cover will still continue for your other children, provided you continue paying premiums. You can make a claim if it’s your child by birth, if they’re legally adopted, or if they’re your stepchild.
What’s the payout amount?
We pay a percentage of your full cover amount. So, after a successful claim, you'll receive either 50% of your full cover amount or £25,000, whichever is lower.
What’s the age range?
Children are covered from 30 days old to 18 years, or 21 years if they’re in full‐time education.
What else is covered?
If the worst does happen, and a child passes away within the policy term, we have a separate benefit that’s also included as standard. We pay out £5,000, which could be used towards funeral costs, and we also offer to talk to the funeral director, to help take the strain away.
Why might children's benefit be needed?
It’s for the same reason you might want any type of critical illness cover – to know that, on a successful claim, you’d get a lump sum to help you through a difficult time.
The money might be put towards things like:
- Travel expenses to get treatment in hospital
- Adapting your home with equipment to aid recovery
- Childcare costs
- Helping make up for any lost income, if you have to stop working
- Taking your child and family on days out while they recover
It’s a contribution towards your family’s finances that you can use however you need.
How often is children’s benefit claimed?
Sadly, it might be more often than you imagine. In 2024 alone, we paid out over £7.6 million children's critical illness claims across all of our Aviva individual critical illness policies Footnote [1].
But that’s 361 families who had financial help when they needed it most, with an average payout of £21,321.
What are the most common claims?
In 2024, the most common reason for children's benefit claims was cancer (32.4%), particularly blood cancers.
Other main conditions we receive children’s benefit claims for include:
- Benign brain tumours
- Strokes
- Bacterial Meningitis
- Aplastic Aneamia
What happens when you make a claim for children’s benefit?
If you need to make a claim for children’s benefit, we’ll make sure we handle it with care, and as quickly as we’re able. We know that when a child’s seriously ill it impacts the whole family. We'll ask you to send us any medical letters you already have to speed up the claim process, and if we need to get a specialist report we will take care of everything. Our claims team will get to know a bit about you and your family and send a gift – maybe a restaurant voucher for you and your partner, or a toy or arts and craft supplies, to keep their siblings occupied.
If the claim is for cancer, we’ll fast track the process and you won’t have to fill in long forms. We call the cancer nurse or specialist, to ease the strain and let you focus on what’s important.
Next article
Is critical illness cover worth it?
Critical illness cover is similar to life insurance but instead it pays you a lump sum if you’re ill and can’t work.
Related articles
