The government has been urged to clarify how the views of children and young people will be included in new patient involvement structures.
Local HealthWatch organisations will replace existing Local Involvement Networks (Links) in most areas and some professionals working with children and young people feel their views might be ignored as procedures for gathering patient views are likely to be focused on adults. Last week a report from National Children’s Bureau showed that many LINks only manage to involve children and young people in a low-level way, whilst others fail to do it at all.
Sir Paul Ennals, before leaving his post as Chief Executive of the National Children's Bureau said his charity has been lobbying the government to fully include children and young people in HealthWatch arrangements. Earlier this year Sir Paul Ennals wrote a blog post for The Guardian asking for NHS systems to be designed around the needs of children and young people and not just the needs of adults.
Sir Paul commented: "In the past, every Department of Health (DoH) programme for engaging the voice of patients has been very poor at engaging children and young people. We've been arguing that for HealthWatch to do its job it will have to explicitly seek the views of children and young people, including the most vulnerable. If HealthWatch doesn't have a specific duty to listen to children, from past experience we know the voice of children will be lost."
David Behan, the DoH's Director General of Social Care, admitted that initial proposals for HealthWatch had failed to consider how to engage children and young people but that the pause in the passage of legislation through Parliament gave officials the chance to rectify that problem.
Wed, 03/08/2011 - 10:10
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A new package to develop local staff to support and train young people to conduct objective assessments of local services and support recommendations for service improvements.
