NHS Coastal West Sussex Clinical Commissioning Group

Loxwood Medical Practice near Billingshurst, West Sussex, has been presented with a PACE Setter Award for its outstanding work in the care of children and young people.

The PACE Setter Award was established in 2015. To qualify for the award, practices must initially review and refresh their safeguarding policies and procedures, and complete a patient and family survey.  From this patient engagement, each practice has to develop their own unique action plan to cover three ‘key activities’ that meet the needs identified in the survey.

The award is designed by those working within the primary and community care sector and was adopted into the work programme of the South East Coast Strategic Clinical Network (SEC SCN) for Children and Young People. However, the PACE Setter Award programme has now become available for NHS Commissioners and providers in primary and community care across the UK. A PACE Setter organisation will be known by its younger patients (and their carers and families) to be committed to the provision of well-designed, consistent, co-ordinated, family-friendly and patient-centred care.

Dr Mark Piper GP at Loxwood Medical Practice said; “The work that has gone into establishing the PACE Setter Award will benefit patients at our practice, people should find it much easier to access essential resources and the work that has gone into gaining this award should result in better care for our population”.

Loxwood Medical Practice applied for the award after a year-long process which involved engaging with children, young people and their parents, they found a need for more information about mental health services for young people and a demand for CPR training.  Parents with infants also reported a problem accessing basic advice and weight clinics.    

Dr Hannah Davies Named GP for Safeguarding in West Sussex also added; “I want to personally congratulate the team at Loxwood Medical Practice for all their hard work in achieving this award. The changes and improvements that the practice have made as part of this work will really benefit the children, young people and their families that they look after”.

Among the many things they have achieved through improving services and care as part of the award are:

• Boosting child safeguarding procedures to ensure they are robust and go above and beyond the standard GP practices are routinely expected to meet the redesign of the practice.
• The practice website now includes a section that gives young people links and resources on mental health, sexual health, smoking, alcohol and drug use, young carers and means that young people can access a wide range of information more easily.
• The introduction of a new young people's newsletter that provides useful information for young people on issues such as; health and wellbeing - mental, physical, sexual health and anti-bullying campaigns to name a few.
• The launch of a new family first aid course funded by a local charity, which  provides parents, grandparents and carers affordable access to high quality first aid training, with the plan to expand this to offer local primary schools.
• A revamped information pack for new parents to support their experience and knowledge when attending their child’s immunisation appointments.

The practices are now also working with the local secondary school to improve awareness of existing mental health support services.

If you require any additional information on the PACE Setter Award please contact us: Zoe Moore, Senior Communications Officer, zoe.moore10@nhs.net or phone 07920 530410