Childrens Continuing Care Framework

The Children’s Continuing Care Service (“CCCS”) has been developed to strengthen core children’s continuing care provision across the three counties of Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire (Hywel Dda health community).

In order to support the provision of direct patient care to children and young people, the multi-agency Complex Needs panels in each county will scrutinise applications and make the recommendation to commission the provision of direct client care by the partner organisations.

Direct client care will be commissioned for two (2) categories of client need. The categories are not mutually exclusive but acknowledge that there is often a predominant need:

• Children and young people with complex medical/physical health needs (where these needs are predominant)
• Children and young people with additional needs e.g., learning disability, behaviors that challenge /ASD, Mental Health (where these needs are predominant)

Within each of the two categories of client need described above, there will be two levels of care that can be commissioned which may be delivered in the home, education or social care setting:

• Basic care – this would include a range of basic health and social care tasks and it is anticipated that all children and young people for whom the service is being commissioned would require this aspect of care.
• Enhanced care - this would include additional specialist health and social care tasks, in addition to the basic care needs of the child/young person.

The service provided by the Hywel Dda University Health Board will undertake the clinical assessment, monitoring and supervision of the health care package, as well as train and assess the competency of care provider staff.

The delivery of Continuing Care packages requires strong partnership working between agencies, professionals, families/carers and the child/young person in order to meet the holistic need.