27.07.12
Forum publishes recommendations to improve children’s healthcare
The Children and Young People’s health outcomes forum has published proposals on how care for young people can be improved and is helping to develop a new strategy to put children and families at the heart of what happens.
The forum has recommended four new outcome indicators to measure performance against: the time from the first NHS presentation to diagnosis or start of treatment; integrated care; effective transition from children to adult services; and age appropriate services.
Action to implement these changes includes all data on children and young people to be presented in five-year age bands, to allow relevant comparisons to be made. Additionally, the NHS constitution should be applicable to all young people, and the NHS number should be used as a unique identifier across health, education and the criminal justice system.
Forum joint chair Christine Lenehan, director at the Council for Disabled Children, said:
“This report needs to form the basis of a wider children and young people’s health outcomes strategy, which needs to be owned by all organisations in the health system and beyond who have a responsibility for improving the health and wellbeing for this group.”
NHS Confederation chief executive Mike Farrar said: “This is an important piece of work…It is good to see a particular focus on greater involvement of children and their families in shaping healthcare, the importance of specialised education and training, increased integration of services and patient pathways and strengthening the safeguarding of children and young people within the system.”
Improving children’s health outcomes is “not something the NHS can do on its own”, he cautioned, and called for Government strategy to encompass health, education and local government in order to deliver improvements.
General secretary and chief executive officer of the Royal College of Midwives Cathy Warwick said: “We particularly support the emphasis in the report on the importance of preventative work in pregnancy, supporting positive parenting and ensuring maternity and child health services meet the needs of at risk, deprived and disadvantaged communities.”
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