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NHS Haringey seeks new provider for children’s health services

29 November 2010

Press release from NHS Haringey

NHS Haringey is seeking expressions of interest from other NHS organisations to become the provider of health services for children in Haringey.

The services include health visitors, school nurses and speech and language therapists, and are provided in a range of community settings as well as peoples’ homes.

Great Ormond Street Hospital, which currently provides these services on behalf of NHS Haringey, has informed NHS Haringey that it does not want to continue to provide services in Haringey.  It will instead focus on its role in specialist care.

After discussing with Haringey Council and other partners on how the service should be developed for the future, NHS Haringey will formally invite offers in early December, with the new provider in place for 1 April 2011.

Ian Wilson, interim Chief Executive of NHS Haringey said today:

“NHS Haringey has been very happy with Great Ormond Street Hospital’s management of children’s services in Haringey, and recent external reviews have been extremely positive about these services.

“As part of our ongoing discussions with Great Ormond Street, we have mutually agreed that given the national changes in the provision of community services, it is right to look again at how services are provided to children in Haringey.

“We will talk to users and our partners about how we can make services better, and then commission an organisation to provide them.”

Dr Jane Collins Chief Executive of Great Ormond Street Hospital said:

“Great Ormond Street Hospital is proud of the contribution we have made to helping children in Haringey to have a healthy start to life.  And we're proud of the work done by our staff to achieve that.

“The health visitor service is fully recruited to and we’ve added to other key staff; joint working with our partners is much improved; and recent external inspections have found that we are providing a good service to children and their families.

“By mutual agreement with NHS Haringey, they are going to look again at the provision of children’s services in Haringey, and we will no longer continue to manage these services after 1 April next year.

“The board at Great Ormond Street have decided that as a hospital we wish to concentrate on our specialist care, and cease providing our community based care.

“We are of course committed to working closely with our partners and the new provider to ensure a smooth and safe handover of our services."

Following the discussions with users and partner organisations, NHS Haringey will invite a wide range of providers to express an interest in providing the service.

A panel of senior staff from NHS Haringey, a local GP, and the Director of Children and Young People’s Services from the Council (depending on whether or not the Council submit a bid) invite a short list potential providers to give a presentation to the decision making panel.  Other stakeholders will have the opportunity to comment, before a final decision is taken by the NHS Haringey board.

Contact information:

GOSH-ICH Press Office: 020 7239 3125
Email: Coxs@gosh.nhs.uk
For genuine and urgent out of hours call speak to switchboard on 020 7405 9200

Notes to editors

  1. Children’s Community Health Services in Haringey are currently managed by Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.  Services include health visiting; school nursing; speech and language therapy; physiotherapy, occupational therapy, dieticians and paediatricians.  Services are provided in a range of community settings including schools and health centres, as well as peoples’ homes.  The service has over 250 staff and a budget of £8.2 million.
  2. All PCTs in the country are required to move their adult and childrens community services over to an external provider, as part of the Government’s transforming community health services national agenda.  Moving services to a dedicated service provider means they will be better coordinated, more efficient and higher quality care, closer to home.  NHS Haringey had already transferred its services over to Great Ormond Street Hospital.
  3. Great Ormond Street Hospital provided the paediatricians in the service from May 2003 and managed and employed all the staff in the service from April 2008.


Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust is the country’s leading centre for treating sick children, with the widest range of specialists under one roof.

With the UCL Institute of Child Health, we are the largest centre for paediatric research outside the US and play a key role in training children’s health specialists for the future.

Our charity needs to raise £50 million every year to help rebuild and refurbish Great Ormond Street Hospital, buy vital equipment and fund pioneering research. With your help we provide world class care to our very ill children and their families.

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