Cochrane Review: Dietary interventions for recurrent abdominal pain in childhood

image: Pixabay

This is an update of the original Cochrane review, last published in 2009 (Huertas-Ceballos 2009). Recurrent abdominal pain (RAP), including children with irritable bowel syndrome, is a common problem affecting between 4% and 25% of school-aged children. For the majority of such children, no organic cause for their pain can be found on physical examination or investigation. Many dietary inventions have been suggested to improve the symptoms of RAP. These may involve either excluding ingredients from the diet or adding supplements such as fibre or probiotics.

Link to review

DfE report:

This report summarises and presents the findings from a range of activities undertaken by the Department for Education to develop our understanding and find out more about people’s knowledge and experience of peer support for children and young people’s mental health. This included support available within schools, in community settings and online. We wanted to better understand what best practice looks like, what training or accreditation it might include and how peer support fits within the range of mental health support available.

Link to Summary report

Link to full report

JAMA Paediatrics: Comparison of Antibiotic Therapy and Appendectomy for Acute Uncomplicated Appendicitis in Children

 

image: www.publicdomainpictures.net

 

Question  Are antibiotics as initial treatment appropriate for uncomplicated acute appendicitis in pediatric patients?

Findings  In this meta-analysis of 5 studies (including 404 patients), antibiotic treatment was safe and effective in 152 of 168 pediatric patients (90.5%), but the risk for treatment failure increased significantly in patients with appendicolith.

Meaning  Antibiotic treatment can be used as primary treatment in pediatric patients presenting with acute uncomplicated appendicitis without appendicolith.

Link to full article

Briefing from Centre for Mental Health

20 March 2017

Excluded and vulnerable young people often experience multiple risk factors for poor mental health, exacerbated by services that are experienced as ‘hard-to-reach’, which can lead to wide health inequalities.

Research consistently demonstrates that people experiencing material, racial and social disadvantage face poorer life chances. These can include risks to their mental health and becoming caught in cycles of offending.

Meeting us where we’re at summarises our evaluation of three pioneering projects in London developed by MAC-UK. The projects use the INTEGRATE approach, characterised by engaging young people through co-designing and co-delivering projects, and by securing referrals through peers.

Download the briefing: Meeting us where we’re at PDF (1.04KB) 

No Good Options: Report of the Inquiry into Children’s Social Care in England

The All Party Parliamentary Group for Children (APPGC) published the findings of their latest Inquiry into children’s social care services in England in March 2017.

The report, ‘No Good Options’, pulls together information obtained throughout the duration of the Inquiry which ran from February 2016 to January 2017.  As part of the Inquiry, the APPGC held 7 oral evidence sessions (including one private closed session) and received 62 written submissions from local authorities, academics, statutory bodies, local safeguarding children’s boards and the voluntary sector.

This Inquiry brought together evidence about the current resourcing of children’s social services and changes in the nature and level of demand, to improve our understanding of the challenges facing under-performing children’s services, and how to address them.  ‘No Good Options’ has identified key areas in which improvement is essential if children’s services are to reach all children and young people in need of support.

Report: THE PERFORMANCE OF THE NHS IN ENGLAND IN TRANSFORMING CHILDREN’S MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

The Education Policy Institute has published a new report, The performance of the NHS in England in transforming children’s mental health services, which examines the progress made by the Government in improving children and young people’s mental health services (CAMHS).

The report analyses NHS England’s new ‘Mental Health Five Year Forward View Dashboard’, which tracks the performance of local Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs).

You can read the report in full here.

Launch of new Safer Sleeping Risk Assessment Tool

In Nottinghamshire there are on average 6 deaths each year of babies that are likely to be due to an unsafe sleep environment.

Safer sleep advice is given out to all new parents in pregnancy and the first few days and weeks of a baby’s life by universal health services. To prevent further deaths we need everyone working with families in Nottinghamshire to help ensure safe sleep advice is followed.

To help tackle this a safer sleep risk assessment tool has been developed. The tool explains what safer sleep is and helps you identify risk factors for unsafe sleeping. It also provides information to help you support families and includes links to resources that you can download for parents.

(Please Note: this tool is not intended for use by maternity and health visiting services who should continue to assess and promote safe sleep via the usual processes).

Log into Notts Safeguarding e-learning site here

BMJ: Screen time is associated with adiposity and insulin resistance in children

Picture: Pixabay

 

Background: Higher screen time is associated with type 2 diabetes (T2D) risk in adults, but the association with T2D risk markers in children is unclear. We examined associations between self-reported screen time and T2D risk markers in children.

Conclusions: Strong graded associations between screen time, adiposity and insulin resistance suggest that reducing screen time could facilitate early T2D prevention. While these observations are of considerable public health interest, evidence from randomised controlled trials is needed to suggest causality.

Full article here

RCPCH responds to new report by The King’s Fund

The King’s Fund have released a report, ‘Understanding NHS Financial Pressures’, which looked at four services including neonatal care, to explore the impact of financial pressures on patient care. The report found that access to and quality of care are both being affected in different ways across the NHS.

Responding to the King’s Fund report, Professor Neena Modi, President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said:

“It’s heartening, and consistent with our own findings from the National Neonatal Audit, that the quality of neonatal services in the UK is considered high. But there is no room for complacency.

Transition from Children’s to Adult Community Services Learning Resource, from the Queen’s Nursing Institute

The Queen’s Nursing Institute has launched Transition from Children’s to Adult Community Services Learning Resource.  The resource is designed to improve the experience of young people transitioning from children’s services to adult community services.  It contains modules for district nurses, general practice nurses and healthcare educators.

Link here