Heartbeat: Team embraces new ways of working during pandemic
September 29, 2021
The community children’s nurse team for special educational nursing needs (CCN SEN) care for children and young people with complex nursing needs in both special and mainstream schools and in the community. Here we shine the spotlight on the work the team does and how COVID-19 has affected the way they work over the past 18 months.
What do the CCN SEN team do and how many are in the team?
Our team consists of a mix of band 4 clinical workers to band 7 nurses, whilst we have two non-medical prescribers within our team. This has proved to be essential for children to be treated promptly at home and reducing hospital admissions.
Our role is extremely diverse; we care for those aged from 2 to 19, working across a variety of community settings including schools, homes, nurseries and hospitals. We work wherever is the best place to support the young person and family to enable the child to receive care closer to home. We will work with a wide range of professionals within the NHS, Sandwell Education, social services and the voluntary sector.
We are part of the community children’s therapies and nursing service which enables us to work closely with the multi-agency team and consultant paediatricians to achieve positive outcomes for our patients. For a lot of families we are the first point of access to services in Sandwell.
How has the pandemic affected the team’s way of working?
We have continued to work throughout the pandemic, home visiting and utilising video calls if possible. We have, like everyone else, learnt how to use video conferencing facilities. We were unable to deliver our usual face-to-face training sessions for our schools so have pushed forward online training which has been very successful. We have introduced a drive-through weigh clinic at each school and worked with consultant paediatricians and schools to identify the children who are clinically vulnerable and were required to initially shield during the first and second lockdowns. Once identified we made regular telephone calls to families to maintain contact and support. The team also supported the vaccination programme for adults within the community.
How have you developed partnerships to improve care?
We have developed a communication passport for children with complex special needs to be used when they attend appointments/hospital admissions. This was done in partnership with the paediatric speech and language therapists and the acute paediatric wards.
We have developed a 24 hour postural care pathway for use by the community therapists and nursing team. This supports the team to identify potential issues with pressure ulcers and prevent deterioration. It also has a pathway for children who have developed a pressure ulcer to ensure appropriate referrals, assessment and management.
What sort of feedback have you had from stakeholders and also patient families?
Parents are grateful for our service and are thankful that we will visit at home. We get excellent feedback from them and professionals about the care and support we have given.