The Henry Review: Health Services for Children, Young People and Families in the NSW Health System

The Review of health services for children, young people and families within the NSW Health system by Emeritus Professor Richard Henry AM (the Henry Review) was commissioned by the Minister for Health and focused on the governance and the delivery of health services to children, young people and families in NSW. The Henry Review involved consultation with over 250 stakeholders, site visits to local health district sites, and consideration of a range of submissions, reports and other documentation. 
Professor Henry’s report to the Secretary, NSW Health made 77 recommendations; all have been accepted. The report cites many examples of good practice and identifies opportunities to improve and further align governance and clinical practice with the NSW Health strategic priorities.

Implementation of the Henry Review recommendations is now underway

Dr Nigel Lyons and Dr Paul Craven are the co-chairs of a new time-limited committee that will design the implementation plan and drive early actions in response to the Henry Review recommendations. Committee members include clinicians, consumers and senior representatives from metropolitan and rural local health districts, the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network, primary health care networks, the Ministry of Health, the Agency for Clinical Innovation and the Clinical Excellence Commission.
 

There is strong commitment to realising benefits for patients and their families

The committee acknowledged that the Henry Review provides an important opportunity to address long-standing system challenges and make positive changes that will lead to lasting benefits for children, young people and their families.
 To realise this opportunity for transformational change, the committee will:
  • drive the development of a comprehensive and realistic implementation plan;
  • monitor and oversight implementation of early actions;
  • put in place a sustainable approach to regular communications; and
  • agree the long-term governance arrangements that will ensure effective implementation of the full suite of review recommendations, over the longer term.

Outcomes from the first Committee meeting

At its first meeting on 23 July 2020 the committee:
  • agreed on the approach to implementation planning including the initial allocation of responsibilities and information gathering for recommendations that align to work that is either already underway or planned, and to inform analysis where there are implementation gaps; and
  • noted that recommendations 34 and 37 have been completed (that both the Sydney Children’s Hospital (SCH) and the Children’s Hospital at Westmead (CHW) will be comprehensive specialist children’s hospitals with tertiary and quaternary services on each site; and that the SCH and the CHW will remain in the SCHN).

The next implementation committee meeting is on 3 September 2020

At this meeting, the committee will confirm recommendations where work is underway, discuss approaches to remaining recommendations, consider priorities for the next 12 months and discuss the ongoing state-wide governance structure.
 
Current as at: Friday 14 August 2020
Contact page owner: Disability, Youth and Paediatric Health