Luton and Bedfordshire stakeholder newsletter
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Dear colleagues,
Welcome to our monthly Stakeholder Newsletter.
This has been a challenging year for our services but, with your help and support, we have come so far and achieved so much.
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On behalf of everyone that works in the Luton and Beds Children's Community Health Services, we would like to say a big heartfelt thankyou to all our local NHS colleagues, local organisations and companies, or all their support and help over the past few months.
We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and look forward to working with you all in 2021.
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In this months newsletter:
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- Check out our Beds Health Visitors’ animation
- OT team launch developmental skills packs
- Eye service streamlines its referral process
- Trust signs up to ICON to protect babies
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Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust is coordinating the Covid vaccination rollout across Cambridge, Peterborough, Norfolk and Waveney. In order to do this successfully, the Trust is recruiting temporary staff to work across these areas. There is an opportunity for CCS staff to join our Trust bank to support this crucial programme in the coming months. The vaccination programme in Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes is being coordinated by Hertfordshire Community Services NHS Trust. Any staff re-deployments will be carefully considered for this programme of work, not affecting the delivery of our Healthy Child programme, work to support children with SEN needs and EHCP delivery.
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Our Beds and Luton staff are taking part in mandatory online learning for those who works with or encounter children and young people aged 0-25 with Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) which has been launched by Central Beds Council.
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Coproduction – Our Luton South Asian parent group for the families of young people with epilepsy got together for the first time in nine months. With the help of interpreters, the group members were given support to access the technology around virtual meetings
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An animation about accessing our Bedfordshire Health Visiting services, focusing on our restoration plans and how to contact the service. It's full of information about how the team can help and support during these unprecedented times from antenatal to school. Click on the video to view 'Your Health Visiting Journey'.
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Our Paediatric OT team launched their Developmental Skills packs to help parents and professionals of children with a sensory challenge this week. The packs can be found on our new website page: www.cambscommunityservices.nhs.uk/Bedfordshire/developmental-skills-package and will provide information on graded play activities and ideas to help children practice and progress fine motor skills (how they use and coordinate their hands). The package includes functional everyday activities such as cutlery use, scissor skills, ball skills, early pencil skills, handwriting and managing socks. |
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Our Community Eye Service has been looking at ways of changing their referral pathway in order to make it more efficient and streamlined.
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In order to do this
- The service is now accepting electronic referral directly via the S1 unit: CCS Beds Eye Service. If you do not have this unit on your S1 system, please contact your IT/S1 team to have it added.
- For professionals not on the S1 system an emailed letter or completed referral form can be sent to one of our generic email accounts:
ccs.beds.childrens.eyeservice.bedford@nhs.net – for Bedford, Flitwick, Shefford, CDC(SEN children), Biggleswade, Ampthill, Woburn sands, Stotfold etc
ccs.beds.children.eyeservice.luton@nhs.net – For Luton, Leighton Buzzard, Dunstable, Houghton Regis, Barton, Toddington etc.
Click on the links below for more information |
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 The Trust has signed up to the ICON programme 'All Babies Cry' and we are planning to promote across the area over the coming weeks, particularly to men. Find out more about this campaign on our website pages: Bedfordshire and Luton
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Our services are coming up with innovative ways of working. Our Nutrition and Dietetics team has increased the skill mix within the paediatric Service to provide more children with diagnosed CMPA (Cow’s Milk Protein Allergy) a timely assessment. These assessments give families, who are ready to begin milk reintroduction, the support they need to begin or complete the process safely and confidently. Through skill mix, the service has been able to increase its capacity to review more children around the appropriate time and have been able to discharge children early. The skill mix approach has also supported the team in highlighting children whose families were in need of extra support enabling the service to target specialist resources where most needed.
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The Bedfordshire Acquired Brain Injury Service and the Neuro Rehab and Early Supported Discharge Team (North) have moved to:
Kempston Clinic, Halsey Road, Kempston, Bedford MK42 8AU
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Our Bedfordshire Special Needs Nursing Service Team carried out an audit which showed that the children and young people attending the area’s special schools – St John’s, Ridgeway and The Ivel - did not need a nurse on site. They felt their needs were better met by the team supporting access to education through assessing risk and supporting training for school staff. All three schools have commented on how effectively everyone has worked together this term. They have found the team accessible and their queries and concerns responded to quickly.
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We have had a few changes to staff over the past month, and includes:
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Our Head of Luton Children’s Services, Tina Charlton has moved onto a new role and we wish her every success for the future. We welcome our new Operational Lead for Luton, Jacqui Wynn (pictured right) whose portfolio will include the Luton 0-19 Healthy Child Programme, Community and Specialist Nursing Services and senior lead for our partnership work in Luton.
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We are also pleased to welcome a new 0-19 Service Manager for Luton following the planned retirement of Jane Paris at the end of January. Michelle Hill will be taking up the post in mid-January 2021 to work with Jane for continuity and Jane will be returning to work on special projects.
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Clinical Systm1 Specialist Lorraine Foster has been appointed as the Clinical Programme Lead for our Bedfordshire and Luton Accessing our Services Programme. Over the next 12 months, Lorraine will be leading this programme of work to improve digital communication and access points across our services.
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In relation to our SEND improvements, Jo Drew has been successfully appointed to the BLMK Designated Clinical Officer role.
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There has been broad support for proposals from the NMC – the nursing and midwifery regulator - relating to the specialist community public health nurse (SCPHN) qualifications. In terms of the specialist practice qualifications (SPQs), which include children’s community nurse and district nurse qualifications, there has been a high degree of consensus about what the content of the standards should be. We proposed replacing the five recordable community specialist practice qualifications (SPQs) with a single recordable community qualification.
The NMC has now agreed with a new proposal to continue to record the existing five community SPQs, but to add one more qualification in specialist community nursing that doesn’t specify a field of practice. We hope this addition will provide a relevant qualification for other community nursing roles in health and social care.
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We are working with the BLMK and NHS England, helping to help promote National and localised messages to BAME women across the Beds and Luton area regarding pregnancy and Coronavirus.
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We will be holding a virtual recruitment day on 17 January 2021 promoting our Beds and Luton Health Visiting and School Nursing Services. Watch out for details coming soon.
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We hope that you have enjoyed reading our newsletter. If you have any comments or would like to find out more about the work we are doing, please email us and let us know, please email us on our new Beds and Luton email address at: ccs.lutonandbeds@nhs.net or visit our website: www.cambscommunityservices.nhs.ukIf you have received this newsletter via a share, but would like to subscribe to receive it direct in future, please email us your details: ccs.lutonandbeds@nhs.net |
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