Community Wisdom Pilot comes to an end

By Dr Sarah Haden, Consultant Community Paediatrician and Clinical Lead

Community Paediatrics Department, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

OxPCF July Newsletter Update

Team who attended the case reviews workshop

Very young children with high developmental needs are falling further behind while waiting for a specialist assessment.

Our vision is that we will have the right early interventions in place to help them meet their potential.

It has been a pleasure to work so closely with colleagues in the Oxfordshire Parent Carer’s Forum, 0-19 service (health visitors in particular), and several different clinicians from the Community Paediatrics team over recent months.

Together we have delivered 7 pilot group sessions in different locations all around Oxfordshire for the parents and children aged 2-5y who are waiting for their initial assessment appointments in the Community Paediatrics clinic. The children were all referred for assessment of possibly significant developmental differences and diagnoses. These were informal drop-in sessions for invited parents who were able to talk with the facilitators about their concerns. Many parents who attended have completed the feedback questionnaires, and overall the sessions have been highly valued by those who attended, with 87% saying their expectations were met.

We have also run a half-day workshop on 9th June for health professionals from different services. We gathered detailed information by reviewing case notes of children seen in the service and selected at random, to understand more about the barriers to accessing early interventions, that many of these youngest children and families face.

In the coming weeks we will be coming together to review the feedback from parents and facilitators from the group sessions, together with the insights from the case reviews to refine our plan for interventions in the next phase of the project.