RCPCH Scotland – March 2024
This report, published March 2024, provides an analysis of paediatric waiting times data in Scotland from October 2012 to September 2023. The report contains data on waits for paediatric outpatients, inpatients and day cases and outlines our recommendations on how to support the child health workforce to provide safe, timely and effective care.
Read the report – Worried and waiting
The Academy of Medical Sciences Monday 5th February 2024
The Academy of Medical Sciences has released a stark report highlighting wide-ranging evidence of declining health among children under five in the UK and calls on policymakers to take urgent action to address the situation.
It warns Government that major health issues like infant mortality, obesity and tooth decay are not only damaging the nation’s youngest citizens and their future, but also its economic prosperity, with the cost of inaction estimated to be at least £16 billion a year.
In recent years, progress on child health in the UK has stalled. Infant survival rates are worse than in 60% of similar countries and the number of children living in extreme poverty tripled between 2019 and 2022. Demand for children’s mental health services surge and over a fifth of five-year-old children are overweight or obese, with those living in the most deprived areas twice as likely to be obese than in affluent areas. One-in-four is affected by tooth decay. Vaccination rates have plunged below World Health Organization safety thresholds, threatening outbreaks. Issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic, increased cost of living and climate change compound widespread inequality and are likely to make early years health in the UK even worse.
Read the Report – Prioritising early childhood to promote the nation’s health, wellbeing and prosperity report
HQIP – 14th December 2023
The National Child Mortality Database (NCMD) has published its latest Thematic Report. Based on data from April 2019 to March 2022, this report includes child deaths where infection may have contributed to the death and those where infection provided a complete and sufficient explanation of death, and covers:
It also includes learning from Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP) completed child death reviews where death was categorised as infection, as well as next steps.
Read the Report – Infection related deaths of children and young people in England
NHS Providers – October 2023
This report sets out the data and evidence of the health inequalities experienced by children and young people. It outlines the rationale for shifting attention towards this age group to prevent health inequalities later in life. It also considers the role that trusts can play in targeting interventions towards improving the health and wellbeing of children and young people who are more likely to experience inequalities. The report also highlights the existing work of trusts to reduce children and young people’s health inequalities within case studies from Barts Health NHS Trust and Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust.
Reducing health inequalities faced by children and young people
GIRFT – 25th September 2023
NHS teams focusing on reducing surgical waiting times for children and young people can now access guidance featuring ten practical measures to help tackle the backlog.
NHS colleagues are working hard to restore elective care, but data shows that activity for children and young people (CYP) is still below pre-pandemic levels and recovery remains behind rates seen in adult services. The specialties of ENT, dental services, ophthalmology, urology, and trauma and orthopaedics (including spinal surgery) are especially challenged, with the longest waiting lists for surgery for young patients.
Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) has supported NHS England’s drive for CYP elective recovery by developing concise guidance – Closing the gap: Actions to reduce waiting times for children and young people – offering ten actions which can help reduce waiting times for children, as well as quick links to data, resources and best practice case studies. These complement the NHSE national toolkit for elective recovery for children and young people and other resources provided on the CYP transformation programme workspace.
The ten actions address how to improve theatre capacity, increase theatre utilisation and streamline pathways of care, and include practical measure such as adding extra sessions or ‘super events’ for children’s surgery, avoiding procedures of limited medical benefit by using clinical decision tools, and staggering children’s admission times.
The guidance links to a series of case studies demonstrating how teams across England have taken innovative measures to address their waiting times. For example, in Bath and north-east Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire, a collaboration across the Integrated Care System saw waiting lists for paediatric tooth extractions reduced as a result of focused ‘super weekends’.
Further information – Closing the gap: Actions to reduce waiting times for children and young people
HQIP – June 2023
The Child Health Clinical Outcome Review Programme has published The Inbetweeners, a review of the barriers and facilitators in the process of the transition of children and young people with complex chronic health conditions into adult health services. Based on data on children and young people with one of 12 complex conditions identified from a sample period between 1st October 2019 and 31st March 2021, it concludes that there is no clear pathway for the transition from healthcare services for children and young people to adult healthcare services.
The report finds that the process of transition and subsequent transfer is often fragmented, both within and across specialties, and that adult services often sit only with primary care. As such, it states that developmentally appropriate healthcare should be everyone’s responsibility, with adequate resources needed to allow this to happen.
Read the Report – The Inbetweeners – a review of the transition from CYP into adult health services
NHS England – 2023
The Teenage and Young Adult (TYA) Cancer Network, (the ‘Network’) is designed to bring the key teams and personnel together that comprise the clinical and holistic components of the pathway of care for teenagers and young adults with cancer. The goal of the Network is to enable service users to access the right care in the right place and at the right time, including clinical trials, while benefiting from co-ordinated holistic and psychosocial support.
This document must be read in conjunction with the service specifications for TYA Principal Treatment Centres (TYA PTC) and TYA Designated Hospitals (TYA DH).
Teenage and young adult cancer clinical network specification
HSIB – 25th May 2023
This interim report highlights the significant risks associated with caring for children and young people who exhibit certain high-risk behaviours when staying in a paediatric ward. The risks affect the safety and wellbeing of those with high-risk behaviours and of other patients, family members and staff on the paediatric ward.
Read the Report – Keeping children and young people with mental health needs safe: the design of the paediatric ward
NHS England – 22nd May 2023
This toolkit has been developed by the group and sets out actions that regions, systems and providers should take to accelerate children and young people (CYP) recovery and reduce the elective activity gap between CYP and adults.
Health Improvement Scotland — Community Engagement / April 2023
Event date: 19 April 2023
Event time: 2:00pm to 3:00pm
Our next Community Engagement webinar takes place on Wednesday 19 April, 2pm where presenters will talk about ‘Engaging with Children, Young People and their Families’.
We are delighted to be joined by NHS Tayside who will tell us more about how they involved young people and families from across Tayside to use their voices to shape a new healthy weight strategy aiming to reduce obesity rates across their local communities. Inspiring Young Voices will share how they are developing a collective voice for young people (12 – 25 years old) with diverse needs and experiences including:‘ Inspire Highland’, an example of fun and creative youth-led participation in the Scottish Highlands.
To book: Community Engagement webinar, ‘Engaging with Children, Young People and their Families’
Quality Improvement News 