Children’s Specialist Services in Halton – Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

Welcome to Halton Children’s Specialist Services.

You will find us located at Child Development Centre in Widnes, Halton.

Below you will find a summary of our services, together with full details of how to make a referral for children and young people living in Halton.

We offer a single referral form for referrals to the following services:

Community Paediatricians
Neurodevelopmental Nursing Team
Occupational Therapy
Physiotherapy.

Additionally, some referrals may require a multi-disciplinary and multi-agency assessment approach.

In these cases the referral will be reviewed by a wider group of professionals including: Speech and Language Therapy Service (provided by Chatterbugs), Educational Specialist, Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMHs) and Orthoptist Service.

Please ensure you use all the most recent forms available below.

Referrals will be considered from:

Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators (SENCo) from a school or Early Years setting.
Health professionals such as a health visitor, school nurse or therapist
Social Care professional such as an Early Years or Social Worker
Medical professional such as a GP or a hospital doctor

Once the referral for the child or young person has been reviewed by all the specialist services and partner agencies, both the parent/carer and the referrer will be informed by letter (or email if indicated on the referral form) of the team’s decision. Either of the following responses will be received:

Confirmation of the service or services that have accepted the referral for assessment, together with information about next steps should treatment be required. Signposting to the local and national offer will be provided.

Informed that the referral has not been accepted together with the rationale for the decision not to accept. Signposting to the local and national offers will be provided for support.

Children and young people accepted by the Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT) are likely to have either a suspected condition, or in some cases a known or previously diagnosed condition that requires integrated and coordinated assessments.

The assessments provide information for the MDT to decide on a diagnosis and/or provide an integrated package of care for treatment.

Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust provides the administration and coordination of the MDT on behalf of our partner agencies; Chatter-bugs, Halton Borough Council and Merseycare NHS Foundation Trust.

Referral forms

Step One: Please complete the Referral to Woodview Children’s Specialist Services Form in full.

Step Two: Depending on the reason for a referral complete any of the following forms that are relevant:

Appendix 1 – Children with social communication difficulties
Appendix 2 – For physiotherapy referrals please complete a physiotherapy history sheet
Appendix 3 – For OT and Physiotherapy referrals please also send completed the teacher and parent/carer questionnaires for school aged children or teacher and parent/carer questionnaires for pre-school age children .

Please view the Motor Skills – Handbook for Referrers and Sensory Handbook – Parents.

Appendix 4 – For a paediatric referral for children with suspected ADHD only for children over 5 years old (please also complete the 3 separate forms):

– Advisory information for referrers before considering a referral for ADHD
– Parent SNAP form
– Teacher SNAP form

Step Three:

Please submit the completed referral form electronically.

For all single service referrals sent to:

Community Paediatrics
bchft.haltonpaedsadmin@nhs.net

Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy
bchft.haltonchildrenstherapy@nhs.net

Neuro-developmental Nursing Team:
bchft.haltonNDNT@nhs.net

Our services