News

Children’s healthcare could become an isolated service within the Department of Health under the government’s proposals outlined in the children’s green paper, according to the shadow chairperson of the Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection, writes Clare Jerrom.

Speaking at the Great Ormond Street Hospital lecture, Ian Kennedy highlighted that the green paper’s plans separated children’s healthcare, which remains under the auspices of the Department of Health, from all other activities relating to the care and welfare of children, now centred in the Department for Education and Skills.

The situation is confused, he highlighted, by the fact that some areas of children’s healthcare fall within the remit of the proposed new system of integrated inspection to be led by the DfES while other areas including acute services appear to be excluded from the new system.

Kennedy warned that the proposals left CHAI’s ability to carry out its responsibilities to children “in some doubt”.

 “It would be a sad day if the progress currently being made in relation to children’s healthcare should be shipwrecked on inter departmental divisions of responsibility, with all the opportunity for children to disappear through the cracks which are the inevitable product of such divisions,” he said.

Kennedy also raised concerns about models of inspection because the green paper favours a periodic visit model whereas CHAI believes that inspection should be carried out through a variety of means not limited to visits.

“The model contemplated in the Green paper may be appropriate in the context of child protection,” he said. “But, healthcare is simply too complex to be assessed by a visit every three years.

“Patients and professionals deserve better,” he concluded.