Local resources Barnet

Our children’s dietetics service is a team of registered dieticians who specialise in children’s nutrition. The service provides:

• Home enteral tube feeding
• Appropriate prescribing

The Barnet Children’s Continuing Care team carry out continuing care nurse assessments, reviews and case manage bespoke packages of care for children and young people with complex and continuing health care needs up to their 18th birthday. These are children and young people who have very complex health needs, either due to congenital conditions, long-term, life-limiting, or life-threatening conditions, disability or the after-effects of serious illness or injury. These needs maybe so complex, that they cannot be met by existing universal or specialist services which are routinely available from GP practices, hospitals or in the community. The Integrated Care Board (ICB) is responsible for leading the process of identifying if a child or young person is eligible for Continuing Care, however, Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust has delegated responsibility for this.

Aims of the service:

• provide personalised care packages to individual children based upon an assessed clinical care need
• support discharge from hospital of children with complex medical needs
• establish and maintain clear channels of communication with families at all times
• ensure that packages of care are delivered by professionals who have received specific training and preparation for their work with individual children
• regularly review care packages to ensure that they continue to meet the clinical needs of the child
• work collaboratively with children's social care to provide a holistic approach to supporting families and children in need of support

Making a referral:

Any health care professional e.g., GP, health visitor or hospital, and in addition a social worker, teacher, respite provider; parent (although we would need a healthcare provider to confirm need) can refer to this service.

Referrals are screened by an experienced children’s nurse working with children and young people with complex health needs. If appropriate, a comprehensive assessment will be undertaken involving parents/carers and all relevant professionals involved with the child. The assessment along with recommendations are presented to the Children’s Continuing Care panel which has representations from North Central London Integrated Care Board (ICB), health, education and social care.

Contact the team:
clcht.complexcareteam@nhs.net

Tel – 0208 349 7066

Eligibility criteria:

Children and young people who:

•    are aged 0 -18 and have a GP in Barnet
•    have a very complex health need that cannot be met by existing universal or specialist services alone
•    meet the criteria in line with the National Framework for Children and Young People’s Continuing Care document

Exclusions:
•    those with health needs that are met through existing universal or specialist health services

Location and opening hours:
Oak Lane Health Centre
Oak Lane, East Finchley
N2 8LT

The service operates Monday – Friday 8am – 5pm

Care packages

Continuing Care packages can solely be funded by the NHS or jointly with social care. This care is delivered by a combination of health care support workers and registered nurses, but parents/guardians retain primary responsibility for the care of their child

A personalised care plan is developed for every child in collaboration with their parent/ carer to ensure better outcomes for the child or young person. The team will also make referrals to other services, signpost families to other agencies available and act as the lead professional.

Medical equipment and supplies:

The Children’s Continuing Care team supply medical equipment and supplies for the delivery of the care the individual child or young person require. The nature of equipment supplied will be dependent on the specific details reported in the Continuing Care nursing needs assessment. Some medical supplies are accessed via other health care services such as General Practitioners (GP) and can be discussed with the Continuing Care team staff.

Child/young person and family experience:

The team would like to work on continuously developing and improving the Continuing Care Service and would like to engage with children or young people and their families.

Please contact us to share your experiences on the service and to confirm that you would like to be involved in future engagement, to support us to develop and improve the service.

For more detail on Continuing Care access the Gov.UK website.

Our orthoptics service delivers a paediatric eye service (screening, diagnosis and treatment of eye problems within community settings).

Our service aims to prevent the occurrence of visually impairing disease through effective screening and treatment.

The team aim to reduce the visual impact of established disease e.g. vision screening for vision impairment in four to five year olds followed by appropriate treatment.

Referral information, inclusion criteria, opening times and addresses can be found on the orthoptics pages under services. 

Improving the health and wellbeing of looked after children and young people is paramount and is a statutory duty. In the looked after children's nursing teams we undertake annual or bi-annual health review of all children in foster care.

We work closely with our children, young people and fellow health professionals to: ensure a child’s health and wellbeing, to act as health advocates and to enable their voices to be heard in all decisions about their health.

Who can refer?

When a child comes into care, there is a statutory obligation for them to have an initial health assessment, usually undertaken by a paediatrician. Subsequently, social workers refer our looked after children to us for their review health assessments.

Social workers, carers and other key stakeholders contact us throughour the year, for advice/support on a case-by-case basis.

Locations and opening hours: 

Oak Lane Clinic

Address: Oak Lane, East Finchley, London, N2 8LT

It is important that we all work together to keep children and young people safe from harm.

If you believe a child is at risk of immediate harm please call the police on 999

If you are worried that a child may be suffering, or may be at risk of harm you can refer to the Barnet social care team here