Children Looked After Health Team

The Children Looked After health team in Islington are responsible for promoting all aspects of health to children and young adults who are looked after by Islington Children's Social Care.

The Children Looked After Health team are responsible for arranging Statutory Health Assessments for Islington's CLA population; the current statutory requirements are;

• Initial health Assessments are completed within 4 weeks of a child or young person becoming looked after
• Annual Review Health Assessments for children and young people aged over 5yrs.
• 6 monthly Review Health Assessments for children aged under 5yrs.

The CLA Health team comprises of;

• Medical Adviser
• Designated Nurse, for CLA aged  0-7 years
• Nurse Health Adviser for CLA aged 8-14yrs
• Nurse Health Adviser for CLA aged 15yrs and Care leavers
• Administrator

Initial Health Assessments are completed by a Doctor and in the majority of cases this is done by the service's Medical Adviser in a dedicated CLA clinic which takes place weekly. This means that newly looked after CLA have a Paediatric Assessment rather than a generic health assessment.

Birth families (where safe and appropriate for the child) are invited to the health assessments to improve information gathering and clarify consent issues.

Nurses are allocated to age groups to take advantage of specific expertise of individual staff and to ensure that all Children and young people looked after have a named health professional as recommended in Care Matters.

The Nurse Health Advisers offer a clinic based and an outreach service. So for Children and young people placed outside of London or  where travelling back to Islington is problematic they can be visited in placement and for Children and young people within travelling distance a clinic appointment can be offered.

 Wherever possible, assessments by Nurse Health Advisers are completed outside of school hours in recognition of the importance of minimising disruption to education.

Over and above statutory requirements the Children Looked After health team delivers specific health targeted interventions such as:

• Advocacy for example accompanying young people to health appointments as necessary, including sexual health
• immunisations, both planned sessions  and opportunistic
• Advice on Looking after babies (feeding, weaning, sleeping)
• Child development
• Health promotion
• Weight management
• Sexual health and contraceptive advice
• Smoking cessation support
• Support for foster carers
• Training (foster carers, social care, health, prospective adopters)
• Post adoption support
• The Medical Adviser also provides Medical and health advice to Islington's Permanency and Fostering Panels.
• The Designated Nurse is the health representative on the Fostering Panel