Charity embeds family support worker in children’s emergency department
Joe Lepper
Thursday, April 7, 2022
A new pilot scheme, launched by Barnardo's, will see a family support worker based in a hospital’s children’s emergency department.
The trial is taking place at Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust’s Lister Hospital in a bid to improve support for families when children are discharged.
This includes help with housing problems and signposting to local specialist services.
As well as improving community support the pilot also aims to speed up the process of discharging children and to avoid repeat admissions, to relieve pressure on NHS staff.
“Our aim is to work with families who don’t really need to be attending Accident and Emergency and would ordinarily be sent home,” said Barnardo’s director of health Rukshana Kapasi.
“Often these people then return to A&E as the issue for them has not been resolved, yet this is placing a significant burden on teams working within the department.
“Our support means that we can help families with a wide variety of issues from housing, safety and family problems.
“We can signpost to the GP and other local organisations depending on the needs of the family and we also run family centres in the area which have established local links and can provide ongoing assistance as needed.”
The Family In-reach Support Service pilot is part funded through the People’s Postcode Lottery.
Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust deputy director of children and young people operations Naomi Mason, added: “By providing support and care to families in the community, patients can be treated closer to home.
“Our joined-up approach with other healthcare partners means they can access the support they need, without needing to visit Emergency departments; the new family support worker will help patients to access these services even more efficiently.”
This is the latest initiative to see children’s and young people’s professionals based in hospitals to improve support.
In December the Youth Endowment Foundation published research on schemes that involve youth workers embedded into hospitals across the UK.
This found that the hospital based workers showed “real promise” in reducing youth violence.
