Kingston community health services for children and young people rated good   You are here: Home » News Detail

Kingston community health services for children and young people rated good

Community health services for children and young people in Kingston have been rated ‘Good’ in a CQC (Care Quality Commission) report that praises staff for treating children, young people and families with compassion and kindness, taking into account their individual needs and respecting their privacy and dignity. The report, published today, also highlights the “overwhelmingly positive feedback” from families about the services: “They praised staff for their help and support. They felt listened to, informed, and involved in their children’s care.”

CQC inspectors visited Your Healthcare CIC, the community interest company responsible for delivering community health services for the NHS in Kingston, on four occasions between May and July this year. The subsequent report recognised that:

• The service planned care to meet the needs of local people, took account of children and young people’s individual needs, and made it easy for people to give feedback;
• Safeguarding processes and follow up were very robust and thorough. There was good evidence of comprehensive and regular safeguarding supervision.
• The service provided emotional support to children and young people, families and carers.

Staff also gave the inspectors very positive feedback about the service. They said it “fostered a good culture, had a very supportive management and excellent staff wellbeing support”.

Commenting on the report’s findings, Ed Montgomery, Your Healthcare’s managing director, said: “This is a very positive report. Our teams are shown to be caring, safe and well-led and our three organisational objectives of people focus, community partnership and valuing staff are strong themes throughout. One of the most important reflections from the CQC is that families gave overwhelmingly positive feedback, and the compassion and kindness shown to children, young people and their families is a strong theme throughout. Our robust safeguarding processes are also highlighted and Your Healthcare is shown to work effectively with partner organisations within the larger health and social care landscape. We are really proud of this report which, as with our 2022 inspections, highlights the vital services our teams deliver in the community.”

A small number of areas were identified by the CQC as needing improvement. These included completing checks for the mandated milestones outlined in the Healthy Child Programme, improving consent recording in patient records and reducing some waiting times.

Ed Montgomery added: “We accept the areas for improvement identified and have already addressed those which we were able to resolve independently. We will continue our discussions with commissioners and system partners to establish the best way forward to reduce children’s speech and language therapy waiting times and the most effective approach to maintaining an effective enuresis service in the community.”

Link to report

Ends/

Notes To Editors:

1. Your Healthcare CIC delivers NHS health and social care community services in the Royal Borough of Kingston, and learning disability and autism services for adults in the London Borough of Richmond. We are proud to deliver patient-led, high quality health and social care programmes and cover a wide range of services, from those targeted at people living with complex health and care needs – such as district nursing and palliative care – to health promotion services – such as school nursing and health visiting. Community services play a key role in keeping people well, treating and managing acute illness and long-term conditions, and supporting people to live independently at home.
   
   
2. Additional excerpts from the inspection report:
   i. Families gave overwhelmingly positive feedback about the service.
   ii. Parents told us they received comprehensive and helpful information from the beginning. They praised all of the staff, including clinical and administrative staff, and said they were supportive, proactive and responsive. Parents said they felt involved in the care for their child and knew who to contact in an emergency.
   iii. Direct comments from parents, which were representative of this feedback, included: “Staff are supportive, lovely, professional”, “they are responsive, helpful, providing support whenever you need”, “if I had any concern, I could go back to them.”
   iv. All healthcare professionals responsible for delivering care worked together as a team to benefit children, young people and their families. They supported each other to provide good care.
   v. We observed interactions between staff and families to be friendly and caring.
   vi. Staff provided emotional support to children, young people and their families to minimise their distress. They understood children and young people’s personal, cultural and religious needs.
   vii. Staff supported and involved children, young people and their families to understand their condition and make decisions about their care and treatment. They ensured a family centred approach. They knew how to support children, young people and their families who lacked capacity to make their own decisions or were experiencing mental ill health.
   viii. Staff understood how to protect children, young people and their families from abuse and the service worked well with other agencies to do so. Staff had training on how to recognise and report abuse and they knew how to apply it.
   ix. Staff felt respected, supported and valued. They were focused on the needs of patients receiving care. Without exception staff told us that their wellbeing was supported and could give many examples of different types of support.
   x. The service promoted equality and diversity in daily work. The service had an open culture where patients, their families and staff could raise concerns without fear.
   xi. Morale within the team was very high and staff were happy and proud to work for the organisation. Staff told us they felt well looked after and trusted by managers and leaders.
   xii. Staff told us there was an open culture where they could raise concerns without fear of retribution. All staff we spoke with told us they would not hesitate to raise concerns. They were confident that they would be listened to and action taken.
   xiii. Leaders and staff actively and openly engaged with patients, staff, equality groups, the public and local organisations to plan and manage services. They collaborated with partner organisations to help improve services for children, young people and families.
   xiv. Managers encouraged innovation and participation in research. The service was developing a research project to support building resilience for children when they go to secondary schools and had created autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) training materials for GPs, schools and special educational needs coordinators (SENCOs).
   xv. The service was inclusive and took account of individual needs and preferences. For example, the service offered evening programmes and Saturday clinics for working parents. Health visitors were able to assess whether parents needed more support and could offer visits in addition to the mandated child health reviews.
   xvi. The service provided an infant feeding drop-in session four times a week for parents, led by the specialist infant feeding team. These sessions included peer support groups supported by the wider health visiting team who had the skills and knowledge to make this provision, as well as specialist clinics led by a lactation consultant.

For further information please contact:
Jo Thomas
Marketing and Communications Lead
Jo.thomas@yourhealthcare.org
07880 410293