Hospital says it will end contract with controversial health trust to concentrate on more specialist care.

HEALTH bosses in Haringey are searching for new organisations to provide their children’s health services, after Great Ormond Street Hospital decided they did not wish to continue with their contract.

GOSH say it has decided to focus on more specialist care in the future, leaving NHS Haringey looking for organisations to provide services such as health visitors, school nurses and speech and language therapists.

The trust’s service has a chequered past following the Baby P tragedy - while GOSH provided some doctors to hospitals where Peter was taken before he died, the children’s hospital only began their full contract in April 2008, following his death.

After discussing with Haringey Council and other partners how the service should be developed for the future, NHS Haringey will formally invite offers in early December, with the new provider in place for 1 April 2011.

A panel made of senior staff from NHS Haringey and a local GP will make the decision on who to put forward to the PCT’s board, along with the director of Children and Young People’s Services at Haringey Council - but only if the authority doesn’t itself make a bid to provide the care.

Ian Wilson, interim Chief Executive of NHS Haringey said: “NHS Haringey has been very happy with Great Ormond Street Hospital’s management of children’s services in Haringey, and recent external reviews have been extremely positive about these services.

“As part of our ongoing discussions with Great Ormond Street, we have mutually agreed that given the national changes in the provision of community services, it is right to look again at how services are provided to children in Haringey.

“We will talk to users and our partners about how we can make services better, and then commission an organisation to provide them.”

Dr Jane Collins Chief Executive of Great Ormond Street Hospital added: “Great Ormond Street Hospital is proud of the contribution we have made to helping children in Haringey to have a healthy start to life. And we’re proud of the work done by our staff to achieve that.

“The health visitor service is fully recruited to and we’ve added to other key staff; joint working with our partners is much improved; and recent external inspections have found that we are providing a good service to children and their families.

“By mutual agreement with NHS Haringey, they are going to look again at the provision of children’s services in Haringey, and we will no longer continue manage these services after 1 April next year.

“The board at Great Ormond Street have decided that as a hospital we wish to concentrate on our specialist care, and cease providing our community based

care.”