Cornwall children’s health services provide community care, delivered by health visitors, school nurses, assistant family health practitioners, community nurses, community nursery nurses, and family health workers, infant feeding peer support coordinators and Best Start in Life (BSiL) practitioners across the county of Cornwall and Isles of Scilly.
We rated the service as good because:
- Staff understood how to protect children and young people from abuse, and managed safety well. The service controlled infection risk well. Staff assessed risks to children and young people, acted on them and kept good care records. The service managed safety incidents well and learned lessons from them.
- Staff provided good care and treatment. For example, health visitors provided evidence based care and support, helping families with ongoing developmental health needs for children and young people. School nurses promoted health and wellbeing of the school aged population. Family health workers provided support to families, giving evidenced based advice, measuring babies height and weight in community hubs across Cornwall and Isles of Scilly. Managers monitored the effectiveness of the service and made sure staff were competent. Staff worked well together for the benefit of children and young people, advised them and their families on how to lead healthier lives, supported them to make decisions about their care and had access to good information.
- Staff treated children and young people with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity and took account of their individual needs. They provided emotional support to children and young people, families and carers.
- Feedback from families was complimentary of the service, recognising professionalism, respect and compassion given from staff.
- The service planned care to meet the needs of local people. For example, there were initiatives and strategies to provide care and treatment to minority communities in each of the localities we visited. Took account of children and young people’s individual needs and made it easy for people to give feedback. People could access the service when they needed it and did not have to wait too long for treatment.
- Leaders ran services well using reliable information systems and supported staff to develop their skills. Staff understood the service’s vision and values, and how to apply them in their work. Staff felt respected, supported and valued. They were focused on the needs of children and young people receiving care. Staff were clear about their roles and accountabilities. The service engaged well with children, young people and the community to plan and manage services and all staff were committed to improving services continually.
However:
- Mandatory training such as basic life support, handwashing as well as infant feeding was not kept up to date.
- Staffing vacancies were relatively high in the West of Cornwall which affected the service’s ability to resume levels of pre-pandemic activity.
- When the provider took over service delivery in 2019, not all records for children transferred over. Only children open to the provider’s caseload at the time of the transfer moved over. This issue is currently subject to an independent review between Cornwall Council and the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board to make a decision on best practise.