"No adequate facilities"

An admission for 3 days for my son into ward 19 was not great from start to finish. The nursing staff were mostly brilliant but the facilities not so much.

My son has quite significant needs, he cannot sit unaided, has swallowing issues and allergies so eating is difficult. I couldn’t believe a children’s ward has no access to a highchair or postural seating for children who need it. We do have postural seating at home but a highchair could have been adapted with towels to manage the few days in hospital, I haven’t came across any other children’s wards that don’t have a highchair. He can’t just sit in his bed etc like most normal children could have.

The food offered didn’t meet his needs from a texture/swallowing point of view and if it did it was items he couldn’t eat due to allergies. We settled for yoghurt at most meals and were only given an adult sized table spoon, I was told no teaspoons or baby spoons were in the ward. For a 20 month old child that isn’t really good enough. He survived on formula for those 3 days and all progress we had made at home with eating had to be rebuilt upon discharge.

I expressed my concerns numerous times and was told ‘we won’t let him starve’ and that was all the information I was given. We had no real plan during admission and most days took over 2-3 hours from asking to speak to someone to having someone come and chat things over. Being stuck in this ward without the physical equipment my son needed was very upsetting for both myself and him. I have had to previously make a complaint in nov 2019 about the lack of understanding and facilities for children with additional needs, but the lack of physical equipment for more physically disabled children is not okay.

After speaking with my sons speech therapist, they asked that I raise this with yourselves so this doesn’t happen again. I feel I couldn’t ever bring any of my children back to this hospital because additional needs aren’t met.