A briefing paper on the development of National Child Health Service Mapping is now available on the DH website. Work has now begun to develop a mapping tool to help describe health provision and its interface with social care and education. The mapping tool will track progress in achieving key National Policy targets.

The exercise aims to develop child health services locally and nationally by providing information that will support the implementation of child policy.

 Locally and nationally, the mapping aims to:

Support the bid for resources by illustrating the distance between current service provision and new standards;

Support the development of meaningful Performance Indicators for children’s health services;

Monitor progress on the implementation of child policy, notably the Green Paper and the Children's National  Service framework;

Specifically support the development of Children's Trusts and Joint Commissioning Strategies through the provision of information that will support a comprehensive needs assessment and clearly define health's contribution in resource terms;

Support new inspection regimes through the provision of data about each local authority which can be used by Joint Area Review teams as part of their inspections processes;

Provide a common methodology that will allow local and national benchmarking and the monitoring of progress over time;

Provide the public and patients with access to helpful information about their local services through the development of a local service directory.

A National Child Health Service Mapping Team was established April 2004 to take this forward. They are:

Telephone: 0191 333 3281