The following information was distributed by Kevin Woods, SEN & Disability Division, DfES –

The Government today published the National Service Framework (NSF) for Children, Young People and Maternity Services. It aims to ensure fair, high quality and integrated health and social care from pregnancy, right through to adulthood. The NSF includes national standards for health and social care services for children and young people.

Full implementation of the standards will take up to ten years. The pace of change and immediate local priorities will vary. Nevertheless, the NHS and local authorities will increasingly be assessed on the quality of their services and whether they are making progress towards meeting the standards. The standards will feed into the new integrated inspection framework, and the NSF delivery strategy will be closely aligned to the wider Change For Children - Every Child Matters implementation programme.

There are five overarching standards which will apply to all children, whatever their circumstances.  These are: Health Promotion and Prevention; Supporting Parents; Integrated child and family centred services; Growing up; and Safeguarding children. In addition, there will be standards on: Children in Hospital (already published); Children who are ill; Children with mental health problems; Disabled children; Medicines; and Maternity.

The Disabled Children's Standard says  

"Children and young people who are disabled or who have complex health needs receive co-ordinated, high-quality child and family centred services which are based on assessed needs, which promote social inclusion and, where possible, which enable them and their families to live ordinary lives."

The main themes of this Standard are: 

• Services promote social inclusion for disabled children and young people, to enable them to participate in childhood, family and community activities. 

• Disabled children and young people have increased access to hospital and primary health care services, therapy and equipment services and social services.  Services are co-ordinated around the needs of the child and family.   

• Services provide early identification of health conditions, impairments and any social and physical barriers to inclusion, through integrated diagnosis and assessment processes.  

• There is better early intervention and support to parents of disabled children through the development of multi-agency packages of care, including the use of direct payments and employment of Key Workers.  

• Palliative care is available for those who need it. A range of flexible, sensitive services is available to support families in the event of the death of a child. 

• Services have robust systems to safeguard disabled children and young people, who are more likely to be vulnerable to abuse than non-disabled children.   

• Multi-agency transition planning takes place to improve support for disabled young people entering adulthood.

Services for disabled children and their families are also mentioned in all the other Standards.

I attach a word version of the Disabled Children's Standard

[This is not attached in this Electronic Bulletin – Peter Limbrick]

The full NSF can be downloaded from the website.

I will be sending hard copies of the Executive Summary and Disabled Children Standard to all social services disabled children's leads when they are available in about three weeks time. Hard copies of all the documents can be ordered from the website above.