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professionals | criteria information | who can come to st oswald's children's service? | assessment and referral pathways

St Oswald’s Children’s Unit is registered to provide specialist residential short breaks for children who have progressive health conditions that are likely to result in shortened life expectancy.

Some of the children will not live to adulthood and others will live to early adulthood. The children are very severely disabled too. All of the children have high care support needs and require supervision from registered nurses.

The following criteria also need to be met:

• A holistic health and social services assessment identifies the child’s need for a specialist residential short break service.
• The child needs supervision from registered children’s nurses.
• The child’s need for planned residential short breaks cannot be met by other services in his/her local area.
• Age range of birth up to 18 years.
• The child lives in Northumberland, Newcastle, Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Sunderland or Derwentside, Durham City and Chester le Street.

Referrals are not made directly to St Oswald’s. There is an assessment and referral pathway that has been agreed with health, social care and St Oswald’s in each area.