The Children's Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, has launched a report that highlights the long periods that many children and young people spend waiting to be discharged from hospital. She will presenting themes around her report to delegates at the Cambridge Children's Hospital inaugural conference on Friday March 27th.
The Children's Commissioner report
The findings of Dame Rachel de Souza's report reveal children are spending tens of thousands of days stuck in hospital when they don’t need to be because the support they need to go home is not available. This mean children who desperately need hospital care are left waiting for beds.
- Children left waiting for discharge from hospital because of delays with housing or care packages, shortages of specialist placements, or inconsistent community health services
- New analysis shows more than 260,000 children spent three or more weeks in hospital during their childhoods, including 1,300 who spent more than a year there
- The Children’s Commissioner calls for urgent action to improve home nursing, community care and specialist placements so children can leave hospital sooner, returning to their families and schools
The report has, for the first time, identified the systemic barriers delaying children’s discharge from hospital, and causing them to miss out on family life, education and everyday childhood experiences.
It shows that as a result of medical advancements, more children with complex or life limiting conditions are living longer and more sustaining lives, but that the community services designed to support them outside hospital – including children’s social care, housing, education, and home nursing – have not kept pace.
Read the report here (opens in a new tab).
Cambridge Children's Hospital reponse
We are delighted that Dame Rachel de Souza will be talking about her important report ‘Children waiting to leave hospital’, at the Cambridge Children's Hospital conference at the end of March.
The report’s call for action is in harmony with our mission for Cambridge Children's Hospital, which is to fully integrate care for children.
Children should spend the shortest possible time in hospital. Through our regional development strategy, we are already addressing the need for embedded links with social care. We have pilot projects underway exploring how digital technologies can support children to remain in their communities, help tackle unequal access to services across our region and reduce disruption to families.
Cambridge Children's hospital will be a hub for equitable community care, enhancing, for example, home nursing through virtual wards, supporting local services in the care of rare or complex cases, and ensuring that the additional mental health needs of children with physical illness are not a barrier to recovery.
The first two pillars of our hospital’s vision for A Whole New Way incorporates this urgent need for considering the whole child and their family, mentally and physically, as well as the whole community, providing services nearer to home, accessible social care and educational continuity linked with the hospital school.
The third pillar of this model of fully integrated care extends to incorporating world-leading research. This influences the whole future of children through, for example, early diagnosis and prevention.
Safer and smarter integrated care for children in Cambridge Children’s Hospital will be a model for national care beyond hospitals. Our fourth pillar, the whole picture, is an international exemplar of joining up all care for children to improve outcomes.
Response from: Dr Rob Heuschkel, Clinical lead for physical health; Professor Isobel Heyman, Clinical co-lead for mental health; Dr Dickon Bevington, Clinical co-lead for mental health; Professor Sam Behjati, Director, Cambridge Children's Research Institute; Professor Tamsin Ford, Research lead for mental health
About Cambridge Children's Hospital
Cambridge Children’s Hospital will be the first specialist children’s hospital for the East of England, unique in fully integrating mental and physical healthcare under one roof, alongside world-leading research. It is a partnership between Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Cambridge.
Our vision is supported by a commitment to treating children close to home. They, and their families, will have better, more equitable access to the care they need, with less time away from school, home and community. A dedicated hospital school, that connects with each child’s usual school, will ensure no one misses out on education because they are unwell.
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