University Hospital

Ratings - Services for children & young people

• Overall

  Requires improvement

• Safe

  Requires improvement

• Effective

  Good

• Caring

  Good

• Responsive

  Requires improvement

• Well-led

  Good

Our view of the service

University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust provides a range of children and young people’s services which includes inpatients, outpatients, and a separate children’s emergency department. The children’s outpatient department is a separate facility managed by children’s services.

The hospital has 94 inpatient beds for children on several purpose-built wards. Care is available for infants, children, and young people up to the age of 18 years. Care is provided for emergency admissions, medical day case admissions, surgical day cases and inpatient surgical cases. There was a 6-bedded paediatric high dependency unit (HDU).

The service provided care for newborn babies requiring treatment in the level 3 neonatal unit is part of the west midlands perinatal network. Care was provided with 36 cots, 8 of which were intensive care, 8 were high dependency, 14 were special care and 6 transitional care with facilities for parents and carers to stay with their baby in hospital.

We carried out an unannounced assessment of the children and young people’s service on 25 and 26 September 2024. We assessed this service due to the time since the previous inspection and the age of the rating. At the last inspection in 2018, the service was rated good in all key questions. We reviewed all key questions; safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led.

We found 4 breaches while completing the assessment at the service.

We visited the children’s wards, paediatric HDU, the neonatal ward and the children’s outpatient’s department. We looked at 18 patient records. We spoke with 14 patients and their families who represented patients aged from newborn babies to 14 years. During our assessment we spoke with 39 members of staff. These included ward clerks, housekeepers, practice educators, teachers, the safeguarding lead, healthcare assistants, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) liaison, service leads, band 4, band 5, band 6, and band 7 nurses. We also spoke with ward managers, consultants, paediatric pharmacists, digital specialists, and children’s nurses.

People's experience of this service

We received mixed feedback from patients and their families. They told us they felt safe and cared for, and thought staff were nice. Parents also told us about the interactions between staff and their children were positive and described how staff would greet younger children with a high-5 or a fist bump. However, some patients and parents told us staff did not always come to speak to them about the care and treatment they received and had to ask staff to explain. Although others said they spoke with staff and were told about the care and treatment, and this had been explained to them in a way they could understand. Parents also felt they were able to ask questions relating to their child or young person’s care.