"We are tremendously grateful for the work of NHS staff"

Thank you so much for taking the time and trouble to feedback to our team following your admission to our Children's Unit. Having had the pleasure of meeting you both on Acorn ward with your little girl, I am so delighted that her condition is now stable and you are back home. I can indeed confirm that she is gorgeous:)

On a more serious note, we are very grateful that you provided such a comprehensive range of ideas and suggestions to support our team improving aspects of care for children and their families. It may be easier to address each individually:

1. 24 hour pharmacy: I am aware that the medication we required for your little girl was more unusual and I have already made enquires with our chief pharmacist about how we may be able to make this process more efficient in the future.

2. Supporting video information for families: This is a wonderful suggestion and I shall take this forward with our lead for paediatric epilepsy services. I am confident that there are appropriate resources available for us to support families. Perhaps we could use a dedicated I-pad with families on the unit and then follow this with written website resources?

3. Room quality/doors: We are well aware of some improvements that are needed for a specific cubicle on Acorn (thanks to you and other families that have provided feedback recently) and we are now confident that this will improve - particularly with regard to the lighting from the old skylight and changing the colour of the room. Your comments help to further support these changes as needing to be led as a priority and I shall ensure that these are taken forward with our Estates team. We shall review the equipment and furniture within each cubicle to ensure only essential items are there in order to facilitate cleaning. We can also ask the cleaning team for their opinion. I shall enquire about the doors aspect with our infectious control team and see how this is addressed in the newer builds within our Trust and what options there are for us to consider a change on our unit.

4. Supplies of basic equipment on the unit: I am aware of one type of equipment that you and your husband kindly bought for our unit - thank you so incredibly much for your generosity especially at such a personally challenging time for you both. This will be valued by other families I am sure. I have taken this forward with our unit manager to review the funding resources for such equipment.

5. Available food options on the unit: Having spoken with our catering liaison manager for dietetics, I understand that a range of food options is offered to cater for all needs including young people with specific allergies, dietary requirements and medical conditions etc. Having said this, we have also had ratings from our 'Friends and Family' around food indicating that it is 'good' (70% of families in November 2019 rated food options as good). We would like to continue to improve this to 'very good' and then 'excellent'! Work is already underway from our paediatric dietetic lead to review and improve all the menus for children, including a new food folder and new menus to be in place by January. These will include new menus for young people with eating disorders and also include vegan options. Our Trust is already underway with plans to review the catering satisfaction across the hospital for adult wards and thanks to your feedback this will now include a specific survey individualised and adapted for our Children's Unit. This survey will commence once the new menus have been in place in January and I would be happy to share the results of this with you if you are interested.

I would whole heartedly agree with your comments about our NHS and I am personally very proud of our team on the Children's unit who continue to provide excellent care as their number one priority.

It was a pleasure to meet you all and I know that our paths will cross again in the near future. I am confident that positive changes will occur as a direct result of your feedback, suggestions and comments and shall update again when this are in place.

Dear beans and potatoes,

I have some great news to share with you... the skylight in cubicle 6 has been replaced!

The room is now so bright and airy and you can actually see the sky! We are also planning for a blind to cover the skylight providing shade in the summer months. We have also been promised that the walls will be painted a more attractive lighter colour very soon.

If you are ever on your way to clinic and have some time, do please pop in to Acorn ward- we would always love to see you and share the improvements to this room with you. Not sure you would recognise it! Thank you again for your original feedback which truly supported this improvement for all other families and staff on our unit.