Monday 29th November saw the launch of our co-produced health passport. The aim of the Health & Wellbeing Passport is to provide service staff with all the necessary information about your child when you use hospital services. This information will help professionals work in partnership with you in meeting your child or young person’s needs. The passport will help children and young people and their parents/ carers to communicate their needs so that health professionals can consider reasonable adjustments for when they visit hospitals.
Health Passports are designed to support and facilitate effective communication and shared understanding between people with disabilities and/or additional needs, family and professionals who are providing care and support.
There are already Health Passports available nationally; here in Wirral we reviewed the currently available hospital passports. We found there was need for local information, local links and a passport specifically designed for children and young people.
A hospital passport provides important information about a patient with a learning disability, including personal details, the type of medication they are taking, and any pre-existing health conditions.
This can include communication aids and how they can be used so health staff can communicate clearly. They can also show how the person expresses things such as happiness, sadness, pain and discomfort.
Hospital passports allow health staff to understand the needs of the individual and help them make the necessary reasonable adjustments to the care and treatment they provide.
This Passport has been designed for use with children and young people with additional needs in hospital but can be used for other people and other situations. You may find it helpful to share with your GP and other health professionals before appointments.
Parents, Carers and young people should complete the passport before attending hospital and share the information with the health professional.
This information can then be shared with each health professional in the hospital.
You can ask for a copy of the Health Passport to be kept with the child or young person’s patient record.
Fully co-produced by professionals, parent/carers and young people, this has been an amazing opportunity for collaborative working and positive outcomes.
I found this a very beneficial project for me to be involved in, listening to different views, opinions and experiences of others.
The launch of the passport was an informal coffee morning where parent/ carers or professionals could drop in and collect a copy. We arranged for services/organisations to have a stall to help share the amazing work they do, in attendance were: The Local Offer, The Positivitree, Crea8ing Careers, Healthwatch Wirral, Wirral Mencap and the Community Learning Disability Team
This project was facilitated by our Clinical Lead – Children and Young People’s Learning Disability Services as an initiative to improve the service experience for children and young people and the parent carers.
HEALTH PASSPORT FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
