Wandsworth Children's Continuing Care Team (WCCCT)

Wandsworth Children’s Continuing Care (CCC)

National Framework for Children and Young People's Continuing Care (publishing.service.gov.uk) 

This is not the same as Continuing Health Care (CHC), this is the adult framework and is assessed differently and has different criteria for eligibility and provision.

CCC is not a statutory provision and differs from an implementation perspective by individual Integrated Care Board (ICB).

South West London ICB has ensured that the practice across all 6 places Kingston, Richmond, Wandsworth, Merton, Sutton and Croydon have aligned their practice and assessment processes.

CCC is the element of care that is when all other universal services have been explored and further support, in the home, is still required. 

Continuing care does not take over from y our parental responsibilities and is to support you in caring for your child, short breaks and respite come from Social care to give you a break.

The process

A professional involved in your child’s care can complete the referral form with the family, all evidence of the health needs MUST be submitted with the referral, including medical reports from the last 6 months, recent child and family assessment form social care, EHCP and any incident logs from school.

The consent form on the referral must be signed to enable to nurse assessor to contact any other professionals involved in your childcare.

The CCC nurse assessor with Triage the referral to determine if it meets the criteria for a full assessment.

The nurse assessor will then forward this to the team, and it will be peer reviewed and signed off.

If the referral meets criteria, for a full assessment, the Nurse assessor will then be in contact to make an appointment to come and visit you to undertake a full assessment, this will be done in conjunction with your social worker.

The nurse assessor will discuss with you how you would like to use any hours that may be awarded by the health panel.

This is usually nighttime, weekends and after school, however it is important to realise that with CCC hours a responsible adult able to care for the child must be present at all times.

The options for your Package of care (POC) would be either via an agency, form the agencies on the quality framework at the ICB or a personal health budge (where you manage the monies yourself and employ the staff directly.)

Following the completion of the assessment and the Decision Support Tool (DST), the nurse assessor will score the needs of your child on a scoring tool called the CHATT tool, this then calculates the number of hours your child can receive form the ICB to support you in caring for their health needs.

If you receive a POC form the ICB this will be reviewed after 3 months of starting and then annually to ensure the POC remains appropriate.

If your child is unwell or their condition changes at all then you can contact your nurse assessor/case manager for a reassessment.

The process for referral to commencement of POC, if eligible, should be around 6 weeks, depending on the time it takes to gather the supporting evidence for the assessment and when the next health panel at the ICB sits.

Please see referral form in documents on this page