The Community Children's Nursing Team (CCNT) is a component of the Services for Children and Young People (SCYPS) within the East London Foundation Trust. We provide a range of services to support children with acute and complex care needs who reside within the London Borough of Newham. These children (aged 0-16 years) that meet our service criteria require skilled nursing intervention and technical support or advice. The nursing team conducts visits at the patient’s home, schools, hospitals and community settings.
In this service experienced and highly skilled nurses provide clinical care to children and young people in the local community who have a health need that meet the service criteria. Care is delivered in their homes or other community settings such as clinics or school sites as appropriate. The service currently runs Monday-Friday within the hours of 9am-5pm, although there maybe flexibility to meet out of school visits before 9am and after 5pm depending on staff capacity.
In order to deliver clinical skills appropriately resources are requested to be prescribed by the patient’s general practitioner (GP) or equipment is commissioned through Newham's Enabled Living equipment services. CCNT work very closely with both services to provide specific equipment in order to meet the health needs of all patients. If required the team will also exhaust other means to get equipment or medical devices so that clinical intervention is not hindered or compromised (I.e. Loan of equipment from local hospital).
Training for staff is also provided either in house or from external institutions to ensure that clinical skills are up to date or that there is no omission in care delivery due to lack of training. We endeavour to provide nursing intervention to all children who require it in the community and we aim to fill in any gaps in the service that would be appropriate for practice.
Referrals and Criteria
Referrals are received from health or social professionals only from primary, secondary or tertiary services. The professional must complete our referral form and send to us via our generic email which can be found on the form. We endeavour to respond to the referrer on the day the referral is received, we then contact the family to introduce our service within 48 hours.
The child must meet the following criteria:
- A child/young person aged 0 – up to 16th birthday (children 16 and over must be referred to district nursing service through their GP)
- A child/young person who is resident within the London borough of Newham and have a GP in Newham.
- A child/young person who has a requirement for Technical/Skilled Nursing Care, Symptom Control management or an Education/Training need around nursing care has been identified to be provided within the home, school or nursery setting.
The criteria for the nursing care required needs to be identified by the referrer, it is then explored in detail by the nurse in charge to assess whether the patient referred is a suitable candidate. These are the following types and examples of care delivery:
- Technical Skilled Nursing Care – Child/ Young person requires a specific identified technical nursing procedure (eg: intravenous medication, subcutaneous medications, blood taking, wound care)
- Symptom Control/Management – The child requires a period of regular assessment and monitoring of symptoms which requires skilled nursing supervision or management, (eg: exacerbation of chronic conditions – eczema/Asthma, monitoring for children undergoing treatment for ALL/ babies on oxygen therapy).
- Education – The child/young person or parent/carer requires education to enable them to continue providing support for on-going treatment, care needs or therapies relating to the child/young person’s condition (eg: use of nebulisers/inhalers in Asthma, artificial feeding routes and care of same, suctioning, Oxygen therapy, administration of medication, Tracheostomy care.
Click here for information on how to refer to our service.