Children's Complex Needs Nursing Service

The Children's Continuing Care and Assessment Team provide evidence based care and support to children and their families or carers.

The Children’s Continuing Care and Assessment team work across the following locations:

• Hyndburn, Ribble Valley and Rossendale
• Blackburn with Darwen
• East Lancashire
• Preston
• West Lancashire

The Children's Continuing Care and Assessment Team provide evidence based care and support to children and their families or carers.

• Providing holistic care for children on our caseload
• Support families, early years settings and others to be able to meet the health needs of the children
• Working in partnership with other agencies statutory, private and voluntary sectors to ensure support is in place for the child and family.
• Act as a key worker and promote the use and support via CAF (Common Assessment Framework)
• Identify those children who are at risk of being harmed either physically or emotionally and act accordingly in line with child protection policy.
• Provide and manage medical devices and consumable equipment to enable Children’s health needs can be met
• Assess children for Children’s Continuing Care and submit recommendations in line with the Midlands, Lancashire and South Cumbria Commissioning Unit assessment tool.

Referrals can be received from professionals via our central admin team.

Referrals are triaged to assess what support the team are able to offer, we may need further information to ensure we can offer the right support or if we are the right team to support your child.

Pennine Lancashire

• Pendle Community High School and College – Oxford Road, Nelson
• Pendle View Primary – Gibfield Road, Colne
• Ridgewood Community High School – Eastern Avenue, Burnley
• Hollygrove School – Barden Lane, Burnley
• White Ash – Thwaites Road, Oswaldtwistle
• Broadfield – Fielding Lane, Oswaldtwistle
• Tor View Community Special School, Clod Lane, Haslingden
• Newfield - Old Bank Lane, Oswaldtwistle

Central Lancashire

• Sir Tom Finney – Blackpool Road, Preston
• Acorns – Blackpool Road, Preston
• Coppice – Ash Grove, Bamber Bridge
• Mayfield- Gloucester Road, Chorley
• West Lancashire
• Kingsbury - School Lane, Skelmersdale
• West Lancashire High - School Lane, Skelmersdale

If your child’s school isn't listed above, it may be that they are under the services of Virgin Care who can be contacted using the following details:

Telephone: 0300 247 004
Email: vcl.019.singlepointofaccess@nhs.net

• To provide specialist health advice support and coordination and where indicated health care delivery, to ensure the health needs are met for children, young people and families with complex and additional health needs registered at a school within the borough or who live within the borough. This includes children and young people who are placed out of borough during term time. The service will also provide advice, consultancy and support to those children and families outside term time
• To carry out sound clinical decision making and clinical interventions when indicated and appropriate in line with the service requirements and the health care professionals scope of professional practice and competence
• To work seamlessly with other health providers to ensure that the health needs of these children and young people are met by delivering ‘the right care by the right person, at the right time, in the right place’.
• To complement the work of universal provision in their delivery of the Universal Partnership Plus as outlined within the Healthy Child Programme.

All work within the service will be based on a number of key principles which support the provision of child and family centred integrated care.

These principles are identified below:

• We focus on what makes a difference to the child and family
• We work with families to agree shared expectations.
• We provide the best service within the resources available
• We offer expert clinical decisions and interventions when indicated in line with the professional’s scope of practice and in line with this service specification.
• We co-produce with parents/carers and school, to agree joint goals  (child and family centred integrated health, education and social care plan EHCP)
• We seek and act on feedback from parent, carers and children who thereby influence practice
• We co-produce with parents/carers and stakeholders fully involved in service development
• We have clear roles and responsibilities
• We ensure the Common Assessment Framework is embedded in practice (CAF - end referral process move to request for support) universal and targeted services have an ongoing key role
• We ensure clinical interventions and innovations are in line with best practice
• We deliver clinical care which is effective and can be measured
• We will advise and consult to ensure care and support is delivered by the most appropriate person working closely with families, school and other healthcare professional colleagues.
• We will support effective and timely transition plans championing the child and young person’s needs
• We will offer support and advice to families, children and young people with complex and additional needs outside of term time via telephone support

Complex Packages of Care Team

Following assessment the Complex Packages of Care (CPOC) team may be commissioned to deliver care to an individual child and provide care and support as identified in the Health Needs Assessment.

The team provides support to children who have been identified as requiring an individual package of care to support them and their complex health needs.

The children and family are involved in developing the child's individual care plan. The package manager and lead nurse work alongside the child and family together.

All our complex packages of care staff are trained and skilled in meeting children's complex health needs. They include qualified nurses and skilled, trained health care support workers. The training includes all practical and theoretical aspects of training such as tracheostomy and ventilation management.

The package of care may include:

• Delivering care as identified during assessment following protocols and procedures and individual holistic approach to care for the child and their family
• Supporting the parents in caring for their child
• Supply and maintenance of medical devices and/or consumables
• Working closely in partnership with other professionals and agencies
• Giving continuity and flexibility to families

The time and support provided is based on the individual child's needs. Ongoing support can be provided and the team can also be contacted by phone.

The Local offer is an online resource that provides information on the support and guidance available to children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) aged 0 - 25 years and their families.

Lancashire County Council Local Offer 

Blackburn with Darwen Local Offer

Children's Complex Care Team

The Children's Complex Care Team (CCCT) are a team of qualified nurses with specialist knowledge and skills relating to children with complex needs. They assess the health needs of children with complex needs.

Any child that has been referred to the CCCT assessment team will be assessed using the Continuing Health Care Decisions Making Tool, as to whether the health needs of the child would entitle the family to a package of care to support them in meeting their child's complex health needs.

The CCCT undertakes all reassessments of children who are commissioned a package of support. These are 3 months following commencement of package then annually or sooner if there are changes in the child's condition.

The CCCT also provides support to those families who have a package of support provided by an agency. A staff nurse within the CCCT team acts as a link nurse and maintains contact on a monthly basis to review the support and signpost families to other services if required. The team would refer to other services as appropriate.

This service is for children and young people who have very complex health needs aged between 0-19 years. Eligibility is assessed on an individual basis which will determine the level of support provided. The service does not provide support for children with a learning disability or mental health issues without physical complex needs.

To access these services a referral form needs to be completed. Health, social care, education and voluntary agencies can refer into the service.

Support for schools and nurseries

Children's Integrated Therapy and Nursing Services bring together a number of therapy and nursing services into an integrated model of provision at locality level.

These services include Children's Occupational Therapy, Speech and Language Therapy, Physiotherapy and Special School/Complex Needs Nursing services. We also deliver support to children who have individual packages of care due to their very complex health needs.

Our aim is to provide a consistently high quality service that is child and family centred for children who have additional needs that may require support from one or more therapy or nursing services. We work in partnership with hospital paediatric services, schools, social care services and other agencies to deliver effective multi-agency care for these children.

We are one of the largest Children's Therapy and Nursing Services in the country. Our size and scale achieves two key benefits; firstly within our workforce we have expert specialist clinicians who are able to advise and develop practice across Lancashire, ensuring we are delivering the highest possible standards of care, embracing the latest research and continually improving and advancing practice. Secondly we are able to deliver high quality services at competitive prices.

Our other unique strength is our co-producing leadership structure which ensures joint decision making between clinicians and managers at all levels of the service, resulting in high clinical quality and a clear focus on the needs of the children, young people and their families. Also key to our success is our commitment to partnership working with both families and other agencies at locality level.

We have taken the step of developing integrated teams within each of our localities. This means that not only do we deliver excellent clinical care but we do it in an integrated way that is personalised around the needs of children and their families.

We want to work with partners to deliver integrated cross-sector working for young people from birth through to the age of 25. Another key aim is to further grow the provision of care at home. Clinical pathways and packages of care are being developed to ensure that the best possible evidence based care is delivered in a timely manner. This is enabled by having multidisciplinary teams working with partners.