Integrated paediatric primary health care
A Discussion Paper on integrated approaches for children and young people in Victorian statutory care
For the past 12 months Dr Susan Webster, Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of General Practice has acted as honorary Academic Adviser to a small group of staff at the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services North Division who are interested in developing area-based approaches to improve health care systems for children and young people living in foster care and kinship care. Writing, consultative meetings, co-design activities and presentations have been important in this advisory role.
Early work identified that state-funded health services are authorised to give high priority to these children. Furthermore, state-funded health services have in-principle endorsement to implement a chronic care model which would better cater to the levels of health need found among this population. However neither of these policy positions has yet been widely translated into targeted health service design.
To meet this policy implementation challenge Dr Webster’s Discussion Paper “Area-based Integrated Health Systems for Children and Young People from Out-of-Home Care in Victoria” identifies:
- relevant concepts and value-based ideas from policy and research literature,
- key authorities on currently accepted good clinical practice;
- findings from research and evaluation studies about factors affecting health care provision for children and young people from out-of-home care.
The Discussion Paper is freely available and has been widely disseminated among government, health and community service organisations
Contact Dr Susan Webster by email to s.webster@unimelb.edu.au