Wow, how has it already been a year since the launch of the Health Check last April? It has undoubtedly been an exciting year, with many positive outcomes and intriguing insights. From working in partnership with local GP surgeries and other community healthcare professionals, and hosting and attending partner and community events, the CYPHP Health Check has been shared with many families across Lambeth and Southwark.
To date, more than 2,500 Health Checks have been completed. After completing the Health Check, families receive the Health Support Pack. This booklet is filled with practical information about their child’s condition, ways to identify and manage triggers, and useful community resources.
The Health Support Pack was created by children’s health and wellbeing specialists, which means that families are receiving condition specific information that is clinically informative and that supports self-management of the child and family’s health and wellbeing.
As well as aligning to the new NHS Long Term Plans’ approach of proactive, preventative care for long term conditions in the community, it has been exciting to see that the Health Check is also reaching families who find it hard to access health services. This was highlighted by analysing the Health Check data that was collected within the first year. Specifically, valuable insights are illustrated in the graphic below:
From our engagement with professionals and the public, including a recent public event hosted by Healthwatch Southwark and Healthwatch Lambeth, there has been agreement that the Health Check’s innovative public health approach is valuable and needed. There have also been suggestions to further embed it into community child and family services, as well as extending it to other child health conditions. These comments and feedback from events and meetings will be used to inform the upcoming review of the Health Check project, where we hope to further make meaningful improvements that will provide additional support for families to access good quality health information.
As part of celebrating the Health Check’s one year anniversary, CYPHP will be sharing interesting facts, figures, and feedback on Twitter during the week of 15th April. We encourage people who are interested in child health to follow us @cyphplondon, and to join the conversation.
Also, to ensure that this great resource is available to all families, we are asking healthcare and non-healthcare professionals to please share the website link below with eligible families. They include parents/carers of children:
aged 0-15 years
with either asthma, constipation, epilepsy, or eczema
and registered with a Lambeth or Southwark GP
To see more of the latest news from CYPHP, please click here.