Pennine Care strengthens children’s nursing teams

Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust has been awarded £116,500 by the Burdett Trust for Nursing to make improvements to its children’s community nursing team.

The children’s community nursing team provides specialist care and treatment at home, to children with an acute condition or illness, preventing the child from going into hospital. They can provide treatment for a range of conditions including asthma, eczema, wound care and diabetes, as well as more specialist care.

Pennine Care has employed two new nurses who will focus on working with GPs and practices to form closer partnerships and encourage more referrals to be made to the teams, instead of hospital. Sahida Begum and Sarah Fisher will also work with hospital services to identify children who could be discharged if a package of care was provided by a children’s community nurse in the patient’s home.

Denise Boyd, Service Development Director for Pennine Care, said: “The children’s community nursing teams provide a valuable service to manage acutely unwell children at home, reducing the need for hospital admission.

"We believe that these teams can be expanded to support more families in the borough and so we hope to work more closely with GPs and secondary care colleagues to identify children and families who can be cared for by the team, instead of having to go to hospital or staying for long periods of time.”

The Burdett Trust for Nursing is an independent charitable trust named after Sir Henry Burdett, the founder of the Royal National Pension Fund for Nurses (RNPFN). The Trust targets its grants at projects that are nurse-led, using its funds to empower nurses and make significant improvements to the patient care environment.