Integrated Women, Children and Families Service

The following services make up the Integrated Women, Children and Families Service

Children’s Ward
Maternity Unit
Neonatal Unit
Children’s Outpatients
Children’s Outreach Team
Health Visiting
School Nursing
Family Planning

During the COVID-19 response, all of our services have had to adapt to be able to deliver care in the safest way possible.

As a result, the following Community Service divisions have made the following changes during COVID-19:

Health Visiting	Services during COVID-19 have been reduced. Staff have been redeployed across the wider care group and public health. The team is currently not offering any face-to-face appointments and has suspended all well baby clinics. The team continues to work closely with community midwives to ensure that all new-born appointments to review their weight and feeding take place. Please refer to Pregnancy guidance for further advice. All women discharged from Maternity Services will be contacted to offer ongoing support by telephone. Several clinic-based Health Visitors will continue to take calls, answer questions and offer family support to you by phone. The Health Visiting Team will continue to support those most vulnerable families whose children are subject to child protection planning, and they will continue to liaise regularly with social care to continue to complete health reports as normal to support the assessment process during COVID-19.
School Nursing	The Public Health Hub is currently closed due to staff being redeployed. School Nurses continue to monitor safeguarding for school-aged children by keeping in contact with appointed social workers to continue to provide the vital health reporting used to inform the wider process within social care.
Family Planning	Services continue to be delivered; however most of this service delivery and consultations are now taking place by phone. Contraception and prescriptions are being prepared and left for women to collect.
Paediatric Outreach Team	The team is continuing to visit children in their homes - but only where it is deemed to be a clinical priority (this would include flushing of central lines, taking bloods and burns management). Where possible, phone consultations have been introduced to reduce the need for face-to-face appointments.
Children’s Ward	The Children’s Ward has been split into two new areas: COVID; and Non-COVID The reason for this is to reduce the risk of cross infection should a child with COVID-19 be admitted to the ward.
Neo-natal Unit	Continues to nurse babies in need of specialist care following delivery.
Paediatric Outpatient Appointments	Have been suspended. Families due to attend are in the process of being contacted by phone following a review of their records by a Consultant Paediatrician. Some children are receiving phone consultations and a small number of these will be scheduled to attend a reduced outpatients’ clinic.