Medway Community Healthcare will manage Medway children’s services

Medway Community Healthcare awarded contract to manage children’s community services in Medway

Following a rigorous procurement process, Medway Council and Medway Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) have awarded the contract to provide children’s community health services in Medway, to Medway Community Healthcare (MCH).

From 1 April 2018, services will be transferred in stages to the Medway-based social enterprise, and provider of NHS community health services.

Heidi Shute, director of children’s services at Medway Community Healthcare (MCH) said: “We are delighted to be able to expand on the children’s services we currently provide, bringing together very experienced staff who will now be able to plan around the health needs of families in Medway. Our focus will be on supporting children and families to achieve the outcomes that are most important to them and we look forward to working with schools and other local partners to make this happen.”

The new approach will bring together 19 different services that support children and families into a single service model reducing duplication, to ensure families have as many joint appointments as possible. Among the new improvements will include personalised health plans for children and young people requiring interventions over and above universal services and a range of parent education with improved access to online resources to support families.

Medway Council’s portfolio holder for children’s services, Cllr Andrew Mackness, said: “We are committed to giving every child in Medway the best start in life and the new service will help children achieve their full potential. The children’s community health service will simplify the way in which families access help and support. There will be a single point of contact which will ensure families will only have to tell their story once.”

Stuart Jeffery, Chief Operating Officer at Medway CCG, said: “Having a single point of access to all children’s community health services and advice should simplify the system and enable children and young people to achieve the best possible health outcomes. More and more services will be delivered in the community rather than in hospitals which fits with the Medway model, a new way of joining up local health and care services so that, where appropriate and possible, services can be delivered closer to people’s homes.”

Cllr David Brake, Medway Council’s portfolio holder in charge of Public Health, said: “We are pleased that the new children’s community health service will launch in Medway in April. The service will provide the integration of 19 different services which support children, young people and families; it will be innovative in its approach and will reduce duplication and improve outcomes for local children, young people and families.”

MCH has proven experience of running high quality community services, and are already the current provider of health visiting and children’s therapy services.

The services affected by the procurement include :–

• Audiology
• Children’s community nursing (complex needs and respiratory)
• Community nursing team for children and young people with learning disabilities
• Community paediatrics
• Continence services
• Health visiting
• Looked after children’s health team
• Nutrition and dietetics
• Children’s occupational therapy
• Children’s physiotherapy
• National child measurement programme
• Oral health programme
• Podiatry
• School nursing
• Special needs nursery
• Speech and Language Therapy (SLT)
• Infant feeding team

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