Child and Adolescent Services

Health and wellbeing in the early years of life influences health in adulthood so the delivery of high-quality care is crucial from birth to the teenage years. In addition to providing skilled clinical care, nurses working in these specialties act as advocates for their patients; they often become trusted carers for children with long-term conditions, seeing them grow up, learn to take control of their own health and move on to adult services. They also provide care in partnership with families and need to be able to develop trusting relationships with them.

This award is open to individual nurses or teams working in the NHS or independent sector with patients from neonates to adolescents in any care setting. Entrants should demonstrate innovation and evidence of improved outcomes of care that involves families and/or empowers adolescents. Examples might include initiatives to:

• Help the parents of neonates in intensive care to be involved in their baby’s care
• Reduce anxiety of children awaiting surgery
• Help adolescents with long-term conditions to take responsibility for managing their own health

Each entry will be judged against the following criteria:

• Innovation: originality of the idea
• Value: impact of the initiative on patient care and/or service effectiveness
• Patient focus: evidence that patient/service user need was central to the work
• Collaboration: evidence of the involvement of other professionals, services and/or patients in the project
• Clinical effectiveness: data demonstrating how this initiative drives clinical enhancements
• Leadership: evidence of entrants championing their innovation in their organisation or more widely
• Adaptability: ideas that could be adapted for use elsewhere in entrants’ organisations or other organisations
• Sustainability: initiatives that can be embedded within organisations to operate without the input of the people who developed them 

Take a look at what our 2018 winners had to say about winning the award:​