‘Disappointment’ from children’s health services over levels of funding

Deputy Mayor Anntoinette Bramble questions low level of funding allocated to young people. Photograph: Hackney Council.

Children’s healthcare bosses have expressed “disappointment” at a low showing for young people in a recent round of funding.

A one-off pot of just under £1.3 million was made available to bid for across health and social care in the area covered by City & Hackney clinical commissioning group (CCG), which includes 43 GP practices.

The children, young people and maternity arm of the CCG has been allocated a proposed £43,253 in funding, decided in September by a scoring group set up by the City & Hackney community education provider network (CHCEPN).

Anne Canning, Hackney Council’s group director of children, adults and community health, said: “All our views about prevention and early intervention don’t seem to be aligned with this.

“I do want on the table that the children’s workstream is feeling at best disappointed, at worst frustrated that this isn’t higher up.”

Cllr Anntoinette Bramble (Lab, London Fields), Hackney’s deputy mayor and cabinet member for education, young people and children’s social care added: “It just seems, in terms of the proportion of young people, to be quite low. It only represents about 3.3 per cent [of total available funding].”

The bid had centred around improving outcomes for children’s health, which would be delivered through City & Hackney’s planned “neighbourhood model of care”, in which the boroughs would be split into eight new neighbourhoods centred around specific GP practices.

The children, young people and maternity workstream of the CCG oversees health services for 0 to 18-year-olds, as well as child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) and learning disabilities and special educational needs (SEND) services for 0 to 25-year-olds.

Wendy Majewska, interim programme lead for CHCEPN, presented the funding proposals for approval at an 11 October meeting of City & Hackney integrated commissioning board.

Majewska said: “£43,253 was 50 per cent of what was asked for, so £86,000 was the requested funding. It was felt that that correlated really closely with a bid for multi-disciplinary working in neighbourhoods.

“The idea is not that the children would only have half the funding which was requested, but actually that it would be incorporated, and it is a priority within the workstreams to address that.”