This follows significant challenges in the service over a number of years, which resulted in temporarily reducing the service from a full children’s ward to a short-stay (12-hour) Paediatric Assessment Unit (PAU) in 2018.
Now, five years on, improved staff recruitment and new ways of working have meant that that the paediatric service has re-established itself as a service offering high quality clinical care to the vast majority of children in the Boston area once again.
Today, the Trust is starting a conversation with patients and the public of Lincolnshire about the future of the service, and whether the current model of care for children at Pilgrim hospital becomes a permanent arrangement.
Managing Director of Family Health at ULHT, Simon Hallion, said: “We are pleased to say that over the last five years we have done extensive work to improve staff recruitment within the paediatric service, and to build a model that works for local families.
“We have come a long way since 2018 and, alongside our clinicians and the families who use our service, we’ve enabled the clinical team to develop a service model which we believe provides the best quality of care for children in the Boston area.
“We now wish to make this a permanent arrangement to provide certainty around the future of the service to our patients, their families and to continue to support positive recruitment of key staff.”
The 12-week public consultation will allow people from across the country to find out more about the paediatric service and offer their views, before a decision is made by ULHT’s Trust Board on the future of this service.
Feedback can be offered via a survey and at public consultation meetings, all of which are described in the full consultation document which can be found on the ULHT website.
The consultation will run until Monday 4 September 2023.