New programme set to start transforming healthcare for children and young people
190,000 children and young people in the London boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark will see their local health services transformed by an innovative change programme funded by Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity and delivered in partnership with King’s College London.
The Lambeth and Southwark Children and Young People’s Health Partnership (CYPHP) is an ambitious programme – one of the biggest of its kind in Europe – to bring together organisations and families to improve everyday healthcare and care for long-term conditions for the youngest in the two boroughs. It seeks to improve the health of children, for example by enhancing healthcare to improve outcomes and shaping services so that the children who need care the most, get the best services possible. The Charity has committed £6.7 million over four years, and has released almost £2.8 million to start implementation.
The grant will help the programme to start implementing a new model of care designed to improve child health and everyday healthcare by:
- Creating child health teams of GPs and other primary care staff working more closely with paediatricians, mental health workers and other specialists, with a greater focus on health promotion.
- Delivering children’s healthcare closer to home and schools
- Training health and non-health professionals, including teachers, to be better at identifying and addressing the physical and emotional needs of children
- Breaking down organisational boundaries to centre care around children’s needs and make services more friendly and accessible
- Addressing health inequities for some of the most vulnerable children – for example through investing in meeting the specific health needs of Looked-After Children and young people.
Kieron Boyle, Chief Executive of Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity, said “The health of children and young people has to be the highest priority. Sadly, across the UK and here in South London, we’re not doing as well as we need to be. Not only does the UK have one of Europe’s highest child mortality rates, but child mortality in Southwark is 30% higher than the average in England. Young people’s A&E attendances in Lambeth and Southwark are also higher than in the rest of the country.
“The Lambeth and Southwark Children and Young People’s Health Partnership will make a vital contribution to addressing these and other issues for the long-term. It is founded on strong partnerships, hugely motivated individuals and a shared commitment to learn. Underpinning it is a crucial premise: improving health should happen as close to the family as possible, by boosting family expertise and improving local healthcare and support. Our hope is that the programme will help to change mind-sets, test new approaches and inspire similarly ambitious work elsewhere.”
Ingrid Wolfe, L&S CYPHP Programme Director and Clinical Senior Lecturer from the Division of Health & Social Care Research at King’s College London, said: "It is very exciting and a great privilege to be involved in this enthusiastic partnership, working together to improve child health. Through supporting families and professionals to provide better care at home and in community settings, such as GP practices and schools, we will respond to the local needs of parents, children and young people. With the new support from Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity, we are all looking forward to implementing the work we have started.”
The Partnership involves NHS Lambeth and NHS Southwark Clinical Commissioning Groups, Lambeth and Southwark Local Authorities, GP Federations, parents, carers and young people working alongside King's Health Partners – comprised of Guy’s and St Thomas’ (which includes Evelina London Children’s Healthcare), King’s College Hospital, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts, as well as King's College London. These partners have long supported the transformation that the Children and Young People’s Health Partnership is now seeking to implement and evaluate.
Andrew Eyres, Chief Officer of NHS Lambeth CCG and co-Chair of the Lambeth and Southwark Children and Young People's Health Partnership Programme Board said “The partners are committed to working together to make a real difference to improve the health and wellbeing of the children we serve. The results from pilots during the Programme’s design phase were encouraging and we now look forward to building on these results to realise the programme’s full potential."
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About the Lambeth and Southwark Children and Young People’s Health Partnership (L&S CYPHP)
The Lambeth and Southwark Children and Young People Health Partnership (L&S CYPHP) is a local partnership of commissioners and providers, parents, carers, young people, and researchers committed to improving the way healthcare is delivered for the 190,000 children and young people (CYP) in Southwark and Lambeth. The programme has been co-designed with local children, young people, parents, clinicians, researchers and other providers and commissioners across the local health economy with the aim of promoting sustainable and scalable change by testing and proving the benefits of a new model of care and approaches to healthcare delivery.
The model of care and supporting programme have been designed to:
• Improve children’s and young people’s health
• Improve the quality of children and young people’s healthcare
• Improve the health system for CYP, for example by create a learning healthcare system – building an evidence base to enable continued improvement of CYP services during and after the programme
Early results from pilot testing of services to improve quality of care look promising. For example, in 2015, a small ‘in-reach clinic’ pilot in North Lambeth, with GPs and paediatricians working closely together, resulted in safely reducing outpatient visits among those children by 17%. Hotlines and rapid access clinics similarly resulted in safely reducing visits to the Emergency Department and outpatients clinics among those children by 35%.
About Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity
Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity is an independent charitable foundation which supports new ideas to tackle major health and care challenges in Lambeth and Southwark. It helps identify and act on key issues in health and care, and supports radical, lasting change for those who live, work or are treated in the area. The Charity partners with others who also strive to improve local health and healthcare, and has an especially close relationship with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. Thanks to its endowment, donations and other assets, the Charity provides funding, invests in ideas and brings people together to share, learn and collaborate. The Charity was established over 500 years ago to support better health and care locally. Its unique history and assets empower it to respond to the many healthcare demands of today and invest in the health of future generations. Find out more at www.gsttcharity.org.uk and follow @GSTTCharity on Twitter.
For more information, please contact the King’s College London press office on 020 7848 3202, pr@kcl.ac.uk.
About King’s College London
King's College London is one of the top 20 universities in the world (2015/16 QS World University Rankings) and among the oldest in England. King's has more than 27,600 students (of whom nearly 10,500 are graduate students) from some 150 countries worldwide, and some 6,800 staff. For more information, please visit King’s in Brief.