You can, but the UK market barely sells it as a standalone product — and understanding why explains what to do instead. Life insurance exists to replace financial loss, and a child’s death, devastating beyond any adult’s, is not a financial catastrophe in the way a breadwinner’s is: no income stops, no mortgage goes unpaid. So the UK market’s actual shelf looks like this: children’s cover built into adult policies (the meaningful one — many critical illness policies automatically include children’s critical illness cover at no extra cost, paying a genuine sum on a child’s serious diagnosis), child-focused plans from friendly societies that are really savings products wearing insurance vocabulary, and occasional small standalone child policies whose honest job is funeral-sized sums and a guaranteed-insurability feature letting the child convert to adult cover later regardless of health. What almost no one needs: a large life policy on a child’s life. What almost every parent asking this question actually needs: proper cover on their own life — because the financially catastrophic death in a family with children is a parent’s — plus the children’s protections that come free inside well-chosen adult policies. That reframe isn’t a sales dodge; it’s the entire honest answer, and the rest of this page walks through it.

For the overwhelming majority of families: no — not because children don’t matter, but because the product solves a problem families with children don’t financially have, while their real risk goes unpriced. Run the honest audit in order. First: do both parents have adequate life cover? A parent’s death removes income, childcare capacity, and mortgage security simultaneously — that’s the catastrophe insurance exists for, and cover for a healthy 30-something starts around £8–12 a month. Second: does either parent’s critical illness cover include children automatically? Many do at no extra cost — Legal & General’s, for instance, pays the lower of 50% of cover or £25,000 on a child’s listed diagnosis, plus hospitalisation and childcare benefits — which delivers the meaningful child protection people imagine a child policy provides, free. Third: is income protected? A parent too ill to work is far likelier than any tragedy, and income protection covers the risk with the highest odds. Fourth: wills, guardianship, and policies written in trust — the free administrative layer that decides who cares for the children and how fast money reaches them. Only after all four are solid does a standalone child policy merit thought, and at that point the honest comparison is usually with a Junior ISA instead. The one scenario with a genuine case: family histories of hereditary conditions, where a small child policy’s guaranteed-insurability option locks in the child’s future right to cover before health can be questioned.

When the underlying goal is ‘put money aside for my child’s future’, savings win, and it’s not close. The child plans marketed with insurance vocabulary — friendly-society tax-exempt savings plans, endowment-style policies — bundle modest investment growth with a small life element, and the bundle typically underperforms a plain Junior ISA on growth, flexibility and charges: Junior ISAs take up to £9,000 per year (2025/26 allowance), grow tax-free, cost pennies in a passive index fund, and belong to the child at 18 with no policy terms attached. The insurance-shaped plans counter with discipline (fixed premiums resist raiding) and the occasional small assured sum, but discipline is available free with a standing order, and the assured sums rarely justify the drag. The honest sorting question: name the job. Money for university, a first car, a house deposit → Junior ISA, and the earlier the better for compounding. Protection against a child’s serious illness → that’s not savings territory at all; it’s the children’s critical illness cover already built free into many adult policies. Protection of the family against the real catastrophes → the parents’ own life cover, critical illness and income protection. A product promising to do several of those jobs at once usually does each worse than the dedicated tool — the oldest rule in personal finance, and children’s products are where it’s broken most charmingly.

Honestly: for a child already diagnosed with a serious condition such as cancer, new insurance on that child’s life or health is generally not available — insurers underwrite against future uncertainty, and an existing diagnosis removes it. Families searching this deserve straight answers about what remains available rather than false hope, so: existing cover still stands — if a parent’s critical illness policy with children’s cover was in force before the diagnosis, a claim for a listed condition may be very much payable, and checking the policy documents (or having a broker check them) should happen immediately, since children’s CI payouts of £25,000-plus exist precisely for this moment. New cover on the parents is unaffected — a child’s illness doesn’t impair the parents’ own insurability, and families facing long treatment journeys often need the parents’ protection more than ever, since one parent frequently reduces work. Practical support exists beyond insurance — hospital charities, local-authority help, disability benefits for children (Disability Living Allowance for under-16s), and hospice and family-support organisations carry real weight here. And for the future: some conditions in childhood are survived fully, and adult insurers assess applications case by case years later — a childhood illness doesn’t automatically mean a lifetime uninsured. This is the corner of the market where honesty matters most, and anyone promising a family otherwise deserves suspicion.