Children and Young People's Continuing Care is designed to support children and young people (up to the age of 18 years) whose health needs exceed those that can be met by existing universal services such as GP, hospital, and community services.
These health needs may be due to:
- disability
- long term or life limiting conditions
- serious illness or injury
Children and young people whose needs cannot be met by the above services alone may require additional support through Children’s Continuing Care.
How to access continuing care
Children and Young People’s Continuing Care is a National Health Service (NHS) and is free to access for those who qualify (meet the eligibility criteria).
A referral, also known as a continuing care checklist, can be made to the Integrated Care Board (ICB) any health/social care professional who thinks a child or young person has unmet health needs and extra support may be needed.
When a child or young person is referred, the ICB may first complete a Children and Young People’s Continuing Care Checklist to see if this indicates that a full assessment is required. Sometimes the process ends here if there are no identified unmet health needs. The outcome of the referral will be discussed with you and your child by the professional who submitted this on their behalf.
If the referral indicates that there might be some unmet health needs, a full assessment may then be carried out. A trained health assessor will collect information and evidence of the child or young person’s health needs liaising with the family, health and care professionals. A meeting will be held to discuss this in further detail, and you and your child will be involved throughout.
The Children and Young People’s Continuing Care National Framework and National Framework for Children and Young People's Continuing Care [PDF, 929KB] provides guidance to Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) on how to create a local continuing care offer. It covers the entire process from pre-assessment to decision-making on whether a child or young person has a continuing care need.
After the assessment
An assessment is completed by the Children and Young People’s Continuing Care (CYPCC) team at Lancashire and South Cumbria’s Integrated Care Board (ICB).
The assessment and recommendations will then be presented to a panel of experts from health and social care along with supporting information. This panel will decide whether the child or young person has a continuing care need. This stage is also known as the continuing care multi-agency eligibility panel.
If a child or young person is deemed to have a continuing care need, a package of care may be arranged within the home to support the child and family. This may be through a care provider or via a personal health budget. The child and family will be consulted with to arrange the most appropriate support.
The CYPCC team will regularly review the care package to ensure it continues to meet the child or young person’s health needs. As their needs change, their eligibility for continuing care may also change, and the support is subject to at least an annual review. During the annual review, the assessed continuing care needs may increase, decrease, or cease altogether. You and your child will be fully consulted throughout the review process. An annual review may indicate the need for a full re-assessment of continuing care needs to understand any changes needed to make sure the correct support is in place.
Personal Health Budgets
If a child or young person is deemed to have a continuing care need and requires an assessed package of care there is an option to use a Personal Health Budget (PHB) to meet some or all of the assessed needs.
A Personal Health Budget is an amount of funding provided via a direct payment, paid directly to the parent/guardian of the child or to a managed account company to support with purchasing the care required.
Choosing to have a Personal Health Budget allows you the flexibility to plan individual and creative ways to meet your care and support needs.
A Personal Health Budget could allow you or your child to be supported by the right person for them; this could be friends or family as a paid personal assistant (PA) or an agency of your choosing.
More information about Personal Health Budgets in Lancashire and South Cumbria.
Contact us
If you want to understand more about Children and Young People’s Continuing Care, please contact the ICB CYPCC service at:
Email: lscicb.childrensreferrals@nhs.net or Telephone 01772 952 610 choose Option 3
Please note the CYP service operates 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. The service does not operate on weekends and Bank Holidays.