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The implementation of the national policy 'Change for Children' is gathering pace. The DH Child Health Strategy for England has further strengthened the health input into Children's Centres and Extended Schools creating an imperative for different sectors to work closely together. Colleagues in health, education and social care as well as the voluntary sector need to grasp this opportunity to enhance and optimise children's health in these settings. This paper describes the changing context and nature of child health in the UK, the rationale for focussing on investment in the early years (0-8 years), a holistic framework to describe the determinants of child health and wellbeing, and how a child public health orientation and way of working can support the achievement of these goals. Its aim is to stimulate discussion and debate in early years settings with a view to strengthening the focus on children' health issues.
On Tuesday 16th September at the 2008 Annual General Meeting, BACCH members voted unanimously to approve the motion that BACCH becomes a registered charitable company. The new company will officially start trading at the beginning of the next financial year (1st June 2009) and members will be sent Gift Aid forms to enable BACCH to claim back tax from subscription fees.
BACCH is pleased to announce that the British Paediatric Mental Health Group has become an affiliated specialty group of BACCH.
At present it is legal for parents to hit their children as long as it does not cause bruising, known as "reasonable chastisement". This can lead, among other feelings, to humiliation and resentment in the child, with possible long term effects on emotional development. An amendment to the Children and Young People Bill is soon to be debated in Parliament, when there is a chance to change this position. MPs will be voting in early October.
Details of a campaign on this by the Children are Unbeatable! Alliance can be found on their website www.childrenareunbeatable.org.uk. They are asking for our support and advise that, if you agree it is wrong for children to have less protection in law against physical assault than adults, you may wish to write to your MP asking them to vote with their conscience and support this amendment. A pre-printed postcard can be downloaded here).
BACCH is supporting the CAUA campaign with a brief statement for their literature: "Physical punishment has a negative impact on child health and well-being. A child's right to personal dignity and protection from physical assault is no less than that of an adult"
Major service reviews have demonstrated that gaps exist in the provision of joined-up healthcare and related services for children, young people and families. As professional organisations whose members work across both public health and children's services, we want to ensure that those strategies, such as Every Child Matters and The Children's Plan, protect and improve the health of children and young people in practice, and uphold the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Choose and Book is a national service that, for the first time, combines electronic booking and a choice of place, date and time for first outpatient appointments. It allows patients to choose their initial hospital appointment, and book it on the spot in the surgery or later on the phone or via the internet.
BACCH has developed a leaflet illustrating the diverse and interesting nature of a career in community paediatrics. The leaflet will be sent to the paediatrics care lead at all medical schools within the UK. Whilst BACCH owns the copyright of the leaflet, it is happy for members to download the leaflet for non-commercial purposes.
BACCH is pleased to announce its endorsement of the Children's Liver Disease Foundation ‘Yellow Alert Campaign’, which promotes the early diagnosis and appropriate referral of liver disease in newly born infants. It is vital that liver disease is identified and treated as early as possible. The Yellow Alert campaign aims to raise awareness, amongst both community healthcare professionals and new parents / parents to be, of the action which should be taken if a baby has prolonged jaundiced (classed as two weeks after birth in a full term baby and three weeks in a premature baby).
For more information, please visit www.childliverdisease.org/education/yellowalert. The BACCH office has copies of the Jaundice Protocal: early identification and referral of liver disease in infants information pack.
Following the presentation of the preliminary results of the undergraduate teaching survey on experiences at medical school and the impact of such experiences on career choice at the ASM, we are asking that those members who have not yet contributed to the survey, to do so as soon as possible by downloading it from here and returning it to kelly.robinson@rcpch.ac.uk.
An expert group convened by the Standing Committee on Childhood Nutrition (SACN) and the RCPCH have now published their report on the applicability of the WHO Growth Standards in the UK. The report recommends that the new WHO standards should be adopted for children between 2 weeks post natal age and 24 months, and that the existing UK standards should continue to be used after the age of 2 years.
The expert group acknowledged that the feasibility of this change would require piloting and field testing, and stressed that health professionals would require additional training and guidance on the use and interpretation of WHO Growth Standards and UK1990 references for monitoring growth in clinical practice. This change will affect all of us! The report can be downloaded from the SACN website: www.sacn.gov.uk or by accessing the Members' Area.
Dr C M Ni Bhrolchain
(with Drs Fawzia Rahman & Mitch Blair)
The British Association for Community Child Health (BACCH) is the largest paediatric subspecialty in the UK; we represent about 1200 career grade paediatricians working in many settings such as health centres, clinics, schools and social care venues as well as traditional hospitals. We work closely with colleagues in other agencies, particularly education and social care and with other health colleagues including general practitioners and community nurses such as health visitors and school nurses. Our referral base is extremely broad and the spectrum of our work covers physical illness, learning problems, emotional health as well as psychosocial problems such as safeguarding and children in special circumstances. We seek to reverse the inverse care law by specifically targeting vulnerable children, carry out holistic assessments of health needs and help establish a multiagency network around the child and family. Many of the children we see have multiple problems NOT requiring admission to hospitals and better managed close to the child's home and school. We would like the Electronic Health Record to support our attempts at reducing health inequalities for our patients, whose manifold health problems are often compounded by economic adversity.
BACCH is a registered charity (number 1129758) and company (number 6738129) in England and Wales and limited by guarantee, Website Design by Freestyle Internet