Endocrine Abstracts

There are 23 000 children with diabetes in England and managing diabetes in a child or young person can be a complex process. Historically care has been variable and the experience of the child or young person is not always positive. This situation has been compounded by a lack of a paediatric diabetes tariff and networks to support best practice.

NHS Diabetes is supporting a number of new innovative projects to develop regional paediatric networks to support existing agencies and work, also to instigate changes to policy and direction. NHS Diabetes committed to a piece of work to identify better and more appropriate ways to fund services. The work in this area developing better understanding the financial constraints, challenges and flows within the NHS paediatric diabetes services and to answer the two key questions;

• What does it cost to treat a young person with diabetes to the standards set out in Making Every Young Person with Diabetes Matter.

• How do we ensure that we get finances to flow into the services whilst also ensuring that those providers deliver an appropriate quality of service to those standards for their local population.

The aim of the NHS Diabetes paediatric programme is therefore to drive up the quality of care for all children in England. This presentation today will describe the structure and remit of the paediatric programme, the networks and the status of the paediatric tariffs to be implemented and developed in 2011 and beyond.

The purpose of attending and speaking at regional events and national events such as this, is share the work and to seek the views, ideas from your everyday practice finding common issues and helping to inform discussions in all the above areas.