Healthy Child Programme

A new schedule of interventions tool has been added to the existing interactive pathways elearning programme.

The resource aims to help local commissioners and service providers navigate current guidance and materials within the Healthy Child Programme – the national public health framework for babies, children and young people.

These schedules bring together evidence, guidance, information and resources to describe local prevention and early intervention and ongoing care activities from preconception to adulthood.

It includes information about preconception care, promoting child development, improving child health outcomes and ensuring that families at risk are identified at the earliest opportunity.

Local authorities, the NHS and other partners can use the tool to inform the commissioning and provision of good quality services for children, young people and families at every level of need, from community and universal to targeted and specialist.

This article explores the theoretical background to knowledge translation and knowledge discovery and gives child health examples of  how diffusion and dissemination of knowledge  occurs in practice. It is suggested that  there is a unique role for knowledge  brokers in paediatrics to facilitate change and outlines how various barriers to change  might be overcome.

We review the aims of the HCP and ask whether it is doing too little or too much? We explore the outcomes that matter and assert that we  often don’t have the data to make this judgement. We call for more data and argue for the importance of getting to know your local data,  in advocating for children and young people. We ask paediatricians to  step up and take a role in the promotion of health and wellbeing of families  in their care: child public health is everybody’s business.

The effectiveness of child health surveillance (CHS) screening is still being questioned. There has been little work on the quality of CHS provided in primary care following the shift in provision encouraged by the 1990 Contract. The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of primary care CHS  screening for five physical conditions: undescended testes,
congenital heart disease, squints, developmental dysplasia  of the hip, and congenital hearing loss.

Rapid review of the evidence base support by the healthy child programme (HCP) 0 to 5 years.