Project background

Paediatric rehabilitation in NSW

In NSW, there are three specialist Paediatric Rehabilitation Services (PRS):

• Kids Rehab, The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network (SCHN)
• Rehab2Kids, Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick, SCHN
• HNEKidsRehab, Hunter New England Kids Health, Newcastle, Hunter New England Local Health District (HNELHD).

The PRS provide a tertiary and quaternary level of care and are led by a medical specialist and a multidisciplinary team. A small amount of paediatric rehabilitation occurs outside of these specialist services in local health districts and community settings.

More information on the PRS, its programs and clinical services is available on the Rehabilitation page of the SCHN website and the HNE KidsRehab page.

The Henry Review

The Review of health services for children, young people and families within the NSW Health system (the Henry Review) was published in January 2020. It included 77 recommendations to NSW Health. The Agency for Clinical Innovation (ACI) has been responsible for addressing a number of the recommendations, including Recommendation 50: “The Ministry of Health works with specialist children’s hospitals and LHDs to better coordinate paediatric rehabilitation in NSW”. Recommendation 50 was the primary focus of this project.

The project and toolkit development

The ACI Rehabilitation Network led the project with oversight from the paediatric rehabilitation steering committee. The committee was comprised of paediatric clinicians and health service managers from specialist and non-specialist services across NSW, consumers and non-government organisation representatives.

To achieve the aim of “better coordination of paediatric rehabilitation in NSW”, ACI developed the Minimum standards for coordinated delivered of paediatric rehabilitation in NSW Health through a process of co-design and extensive consultation with clinicians and consumers via a series of workshops and interviews.

The toolkit is designed to be used to assist local health districts and specialty health networks in adopting these minimum standards.

The process by which the project evolved is outlined in Figure 1.

Consultation

The following groups were consulted over the duration of this project:

• Members of the Paediatric Rehabilitation Steering Committee, as listed under ‘Acknowledgements’ below
• Over 300 clinicians working in local health districts and the three tertiary Paediatric Rehabilitation Services who participated in a series of four workshops in March 2022
• Seven families of children and young people who currently access Paediatric Rehabilitation Services in NSW
• Members of the LHD reference group.

Acknowledgements

PRS managers and rehabilitation medicine leads

Kids Rehab

• Julie-Anne Macey, A/Neurorehabilitation Manager
• Dr Simon Paget, Medical Lead
• Sophie Price, Neurorehabilitation Manager
• Angus Simpson, A/Neurorehabilitation Manager
• Dr Mary-Clare Waugh, Head of Department to June 2022

Rehab2Kids

• Kate Clark, Rehabilitation Services Manager
• Dr Maria Kyriagis, Head of Department
• Dr Anna Ward, A/Head of Department

HNEKidsRehab

• Dr Heather Burnett, Medical Lead
• Gai Lovell, Service Manager

The Paediatric Rehabilitation Steering Committee