National Service Framework

The Children and Maternity National Service Framework (Children’s NSF) was created by the Department of Health in 2004 to help make children healthier, by setting standards for the health service, and its partners in the local authority and community organisations to achieve.

It focuses on outcome for children to ‘be healthy’, which forms part of the wider ‘Every Child Matters; Change for Children’ (ECM) agenda. The Children’s NSF has explored this aim in great detail, so that health services can improve effectively.

The Children’s NSF covers eleven key areas where children’s health services are thought to be in need of improvement:

Standard 1. Promoting health and well-being, identifying needs and intervening early
Standard 2: Supporting parents or carers
Standard 3: Child, young person and family-centred services
Standard 4: Growing up into adulthood
Standard 5: Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people
Standard 6: Children and young people who are ill
Standard 7: Children in hospital
Standard 8: Disabled children and young people and those with complex health needs
Standard 9: The mental health and psychological well-being of children and young people
Standard 10: Medicines for children and young people
Standard 11: Maternity services

Ealing Primary Care Trust, Ealing Hospital, and Ealing’s community and voluntary organisations have been working hard to achieve these standards since they were published. Two years in, they are in the process of reviewing what parts of the NSF have been achieved, and which parts require more work. There is another eight years to go before they are required to meet all the standards set out by the NSF, and Ealing is determined to make progress on those targets steadily and effectively.

For further information, please contact Joanne Murfitt, director of commissioning and performance, Ealing PCT. Email: dirstrategy@ealingpct.nhs.uk, tel: (020) 8893 0299.