Have your say on the way 0-19 Universal Children’s Services are delivered
Overview
West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) and Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHFT) plan to form a formal partnership, to allow NHFT to provide 0-19 Healthy Child Programme (0-19 HCP) services, also known as 0-19 Universal Children’s Services, on the council’s behalf from April 2025.
Learn more about the agreement
This legal agreement helps the council and NHS providers to work together to improve services.
The agreement is called a section 75. It is a legal partnership between local authorities and NHS providers, allowing them to work together to improve services.
It is established under the National Health Service Act 2006 and updated by the Health and Social Care Act 2012.
WNC and NHFT also plan to make changes to the way the service is provided to better identify needs and support families.
Background
The 0-19 Universal Children’s Services, is a set of health and wellbeing services designed to support the health and development of children and young people. The programme is available to all families. The services include health and development reviews at different ages (some required by law and some not), health promotion, early support with concerns, and online digital resources. The programme and services are based on evidence of what works to support good development of children and young people.
Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHFT) provide these services on behalf of West Northamptonshire Council (WNC). The 0-19 Universal Children's Services are delivered by a highly skilled team of qualified Public Health Nurses (Health Visitors and School Nurses) and support staff. The Health Visiting team works with families from pregnancy to 5 years after birth. The School Nursing team works with children and young people aged 5-19. The service also has a specialised Infant Feeding team, a children’s Healthy Lifestyle team and a Family Nurse Partnership team.
Examples of services covered
The following list provides examples of services covered:
- Health and development reviews at different ages for children under 5, usually: Antenatal (before a baby is born), a new birth visit (when a baby is between 10 and 14 days old), a 6 to 8-week review, a text message contact when a baby is 4 months old, a 8 to 12-month review and a 2 to 2.5 years review. These contacts are a mixture of home visits, face to face clinics and virtual contacts.
- Providing evidence based advice and tools to parents through sessions or one-to-one.
- General advice and referral to other services.
- An Infant Feeding team for those needing specialist support.
- Additional support for young parents (the Family Nurse Partnership and Tiny Steps programmes).
- Health screening questions for children starting school.
- The National Childhood Measurement Programme.
- Health promoting and advice workshops and drop-ins for school students.
- Healthy lifestyle advice.
We have undertaken research and stakeholder engagement to help us understand people’s experiences of current services as well as the needs of the local community. We feel that partnering with NHFT is the best way to address the needs and support every child in West Northamptonshire to have the best start in life. Services for children and young people would work closer together to improve health outcomes and make the best use of resources.
Our research and stakeholder engagement also helped us jointly plan and propose changes to the 0-19 Universal Children’s Services to better identify health and development needs and support families within West Northamptonshire.
Why we are consulting
Before the legal section 75 partnership agreement can be put in place and finalised, WNC and NHFT are required to consult with anyone who may be affected by the arrangement.
We also want to ask your views on the proposed changes to the way the service is delivered. Your feedback is important to help us identify and address any issues or gaps and will be considered for future service developments.
How to provide your feedback
Any member of the public and interested organisations can comment on the proposals by completing this anonymous, online survey using the ’Give us your views’ link at the bottom of this page. Please note we will not be able to offer an individual response to your feedback.
If you have any queries or require the survey in another format, please email publichealth@westnorthants.gov.uk, or contact us by phone on 0300 126 7000.
This consultation closes midnight Sunday 5 January 2025.
What happens next?
If the proposals are supported, WNC and NHFT will start a partnership agreement to deliver the new 0-19 Universal Children’s Service in West Northamptonshire from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2033. We will use the feedback from this consultation to modify the service specification.
Give us your views
The information you provide will be kept in accordance with terms of current Data Protection legislation and will only be used in the analysis of consultation responses. Your details will not be passed on to any other individual, organisation or group.
West Northamptonshire Council is the data controller for the information on this form for the purposes of current Data Protection legislation.
For information about how consultation and engagement responses are managed, please see West Northamptonshire Council's consultation and engagement privacy notice.
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