Specialty Doctor Community Paediatrics

Community Paediatrics is based in three localities:
John Mitchell Place, Newry, Childrens Centre, Lurgan and Victoria House, Tower Hill site, Armagh. Outpatient clinics take place mainly on these 3 sites but there are outlying clinics for some specialist services in Dungannon, South Tyrone Hospital, Acorn Centre Armagh (ASD Clinic) and CDC in Newry.

A Multidisciplinary Autism Spectrum Disorder Diagnostic Clinic is based in the Acorn Centre in Armagh and the post holder may with experience be able to contribute to these clinical assessments if agreed as part of their job plan.

The Trust has developed an ADHD service which is multidisciplinary and the successful candidate will contribute to this service.

SHSCT has adopted the regional emotional health and welfare model and created a single point of entry triage meeting twice a week to help families and referrers to navigate the complex MDT pathways most relevant to the child’s needs. The post holder will attend one of these per month.

The Trust has invested recently in the formation of integrated care teams in each locality which are PAMS personnel and part of their role is to provide a support service for children with complex disabilities discharged from hospital and also to provide an integrated multidisciplinary assessment service at initial referral to Community Paediatrics. The post holders will be expected to work closely with this service.

Community Paediatricians contribute to the assessment and management of children with safeguarding issues as part of the multidisciplinary team. Community Paediatricians are expected to attend Child Protection Case Conferences and provide reports to Social Services as required.

Dr Hughes is the Named Doctor for safeguarding for the SHSCT.

Dr Zeinab Abdelrahim is the medical advisor to the adoption panel.

There are five Special Schools located in the SHSCT area who admit children with a range of problems including Autism and severe and complex disability. There are several children with very complex disabilities who require high levels of medical and community nursing input. There are also a range of specialised Learning Support Centres for children with Learning Difficulties, Speech and Language Disorders and Autistic Spectrum Disorders attached to mainstream primary schools.

Over 1000 children across the SHSCT area have statements of their Special Educational Needs and many of these pupils are supported in mainstream schools. There are 5 special schools in the Southern trust and they all have a community paediatric clinic on site.

Community Paediatricians are involved with the identification and assessment of children with Special Educational Needs. They also contribute to the Statementing process in line with Trust Guidelines and liaise with the Southern Education and Library Board as appropriate.

SHSCT community paeds has 2 advanced nurse practitioners who support the team and do their own clinics for ADHD, melatonin and education clinics.

A Children’s Community Nursing service provides support to children at home with a wide range of disability and work closely with the Paediatric teams.

A number of Nurse Led Clinics are within the Trust including a Behavioural Support Service and an Enuretic Service.

The area Child Development Clinic is based in the Childrens Centre in Lurgan and outreaches throughout the trust. Good links are maintained with the Child Development Clinic and Community Paediatrics. There are close links between the Paediatric Community Service, acute Paediatrics and CAMHS.

Partial booking has been implemented for new patients which has improved attendance.

The trust will be adopting the Encompass electronic record in May 2025 and going paperless after this. This will free up admin time and improve many aspects of patient care.

The Childrens and Young Peoples Directorate completed an ambitious plan to further develop & enhance Paediatric services in Craigavon and Daisy Hill, which included a new children’s wards on both sites and the centralisation of all elective Paediatric Surgical and ENT services in Daisy Hill Hospital. The infrastructure for this project has been completed with a new…