Policy
Every Professional Matters: Sustaining
Professionalism within Integrated Children's Services
This report is by the Children's Services Professional
Network, an umbrella body for professionals working in children's
services. The report advocates the retention and support of
specialist professional expertise
Giving Children a Healthy Start: Report by the
Audit Commission
The subject of this report by the Audit Commission is the local
implementation of national policy from 1999 to 2009 on the health
of children from birth to five year of age in England. It covers
local service planning and delivery as well as priority setting. It
discusses how local bodies can improve service delivery and access
for vulnerable groups. The report discusses government funding' s
impact on health outcomes for the under-fives; how effectively
local bodies are managing their resources; and the degree to
which they provide good value for money. The report sets out
examples of good practice and recommendations for national and
local bodies.
Among its recommendations:
- that the Government should monitor and review the impact of the
current economic downturn on the provision of children's
services
- that local authorities and PCTs should:
- ensure that their Children and Young
People's and Operational plans contain appropriate, challenging and
consistent targets for improving the health of the
under-fives;
- use targeted evidence-based interventions to improve the
health of under-fives, particularly those in vulnerable groups,
evaluating impact and ceasing to invest in those that show a poor
return.
Piloting Quality Accounts for primary care and
community services providers
From April 2010, there will be a requirement for all providers
of acute, mental health, learning disability and ambulance services
to produce a Quality Account.
NHS North East and NHS East Midlands are working with a range of
providers across general practice, dentistry, community healthcare
services provision, out of hours and urgent care provision, and
community pharmacy, to pilot Quality Accounts in 2010.
This pilot aims to explore how Quality Accounts for these
providers could best develop. An evaluation of these reports will
help inform the direction of any requirements relating to the
production of Quality Accounts by primary care and community
services providers. The document is aimed at those undertaking the
pilots, but may also be of interest to others.
National Quality Board (NQB): Annual
Report
This first annual report of the NQB combines a description of
the organisation's work to date and its strategic leadership role
for quality in 2010. The NQB will continue to oversee the
development of a number of tools and system levers designed to help
quality improvements to be made at a local level. Also covered in
the report is how the UK can learn from other countries to support
improvements in quality.
Looked After Children: Best commissioning practice and
tools
This section of the Commissioning Support Programme website
provides links to some tools for those involved in children's
services commissioning. These tools provide practical guidance on
effective commissioning, helping commissioners to focus on
improving outcomes.
Learning from the best: what the NHS needs to do
to implement high quality care for all
This report, by the University of Birmingham Health Services
Management Centre (HSMC), presents key messages from an HSMC paper,
written in conjunction with the NHS Institute for Innovation and
Improvement. The paper sets out how the NHS can learn from high
performing health organisations in the delivery of quality.
National Obesity Observatory child
e-atlases
These new child e-atlases allow users to view and compare data
at PCT and Local Authority levels, for both single and dual maps.
Prevalence data from the National Child Measurement Programme
(NCMP) are presented using two sets of Body Mass Index (BMI)
classifications from the British 1990 Child Growth Reference. These
thresholds are used in a clinical setting (for example, by GPs) to
classify children as overweight or obese, and are also used for
feeding back NCMP results to parents.
Consultations
Strengthened Training of Appraisers for
Revalidation: Consultation document from the NHS Revalidation
Team
Produced by the NHS Revalidation Support Team in England, this
is a draft of the document to be used to select and train
appraisers for the strengthened appraisal process, the cornerstone
of revalidation. The training and related information outlined
relates to top-up training to that already conducted in the
NHS.
A commonly agreed framework must be the basis of appraiser
training, to ensure fairness and consistency as well as rigour in
the process. The guidance must be applicable across all specialties
and across all healthcare delivery environments. It would be
particularly interesting to learn from professional and educational
perspectives about what can be done to improve the framework in its
general applicability, in terms of specialty or practice-specific
elements that have been overlooked or inadequately
represented.
The closing date for feedback to the College to include it in
our response is 2 April 2010. Please send the
response by e-mail to
Sarah
Fellows, the Revalidation and CPD Manager at the
RCPCH.