Making children everyone's business in NHS Wales
Today is World Patient Safety Day, and this year’s theme is ‘safe care for every newborn and child’ and ‘patient safety from the start’.
The need to act early and consistently to prevent harm through childhood and build a safer, healthier future for every child in Wales allows us to spotlight the work NHS Wales Performance and Improvement’s National Strategic Clinical Network for Child Health is doing.
Led by Dr Claire Thomas, the network’s clinical lead, the team have set out their annual work plan, adopting a whole system approach, working collaboratively with stakeholders to drive innovation, influence change and improve outcomes for children in Wales, ensuring they have the safest and best start in life.
The network are carrying out a baseline assessment of child health in NHS Wales. It covers the consistency of data collection; it looks at how terminology can differ across services and health boards and in the community.
Dr Claire Thomas said: “It’s about having consistent language across the whole of NHS Wales for children. So that everyone is defining children as the same, that everyone is using the same terminology.
“It’s also about defining a minimum set of standards for what every child can expect, wherever and however they interface with the NHS in Wales.
“For example, they should always have access to play. They should have a child friendly environment to be seen in. They should be able to be seen separately to adults even if they’re being seen in an adult clinic. If a parent needs to have access, you know be able to visit their child on the ward 24 hours a day, that should be acceptable and available.
“It’s almost like a code of conduct for how the NHS in Wales should treat children.”
Sarah Hooke, Assistant Network Manager, worked alongside Dr Thomas in pulling the priorities together, and said: “We want to create an NHS in Wales that recognises the unique status of children.
“If you use the term child, it can mean something very different depending on what part of the NHS you work for.
“We want to set up a common language when we talk about a child in the NHS. What do we mean? 0 to 18? When we talk about a young person, how is that defined? When we talk about a looked after child or a child with complex needs, what do those two terms mean?
“We want to have an agreed set of universal definitions of terminology so that children don’t get lost in the system. They don’t get lost in translation.”
That links into data collection as well. The network’s early work identified inconsistent data collection, meaning it was almost impossible to look at services at an all-Wales level.
Sarah Hooke said the baseline assessment will help with that: “Better robust data sets and data collection for children, will enable us to identity unwarranted variation and improve standards and safety of care. It’s a good foundation for us as a network to look at improving outcomes for children.
“It's hard for us when not everyone is collecting the same data and when you're not able as a network to have that national oversight because we’re comparing apples and pears. This baseline is very important to be able to deliver safe and equitable healthcare for children.”
Another ambition of Dr Thomas is establishing a national children’s PROM (Patient reported outcome measure). The network is working with Value Transformation and is on the verge of identifying an existing PROM that can be used throughout Wales. It would be a PROM that could be used across services.
Dr Thomas said: “It will completely change the way we’re able to look at our services throughout Wales and benchmark them at a national level. We’ll be able to go to one health board and say you’ve got really, really high positive outcomes, what are you doing differently that we can all learn from?”
Another topic that has consistently come up in the network’s conversations with stakeholders and key partners is waiting lists – times and targets. The network is currently engaging with all areas of NHS Wales Performance and Improvement to produce an evidence-based report to define the needs of children, context, scope and status of paediatric waiting lists across Wales.
Dr Claire Thomas said: “The waiting lists targets we have must be right for children, so we’re not applying adult targets to them and to those lists. If you are two years old and then you wait two years on a waiting list, that is double your life.”
Part of this work will see the network create online information and guidance for patients, their families and for their healthcare professionals to support care while on a waiting list.
Dr Thomas said: “Our children aren’t small adults. They need individualised safe care that fits them.”
You will find more information on NHS Wales Performance and Improvement’s National Strategic Clinical Network for Child Health here.
You will find more information on World Patient Safety Day 2025 here.