In 2023, the Children’s Hospital Trust (CHT) launched the ‘Strengthening burns care for children in the Western Cape’ project with the goal of strengthen burns services for children in the Western Cape to ensure earlier intervention, improve overall outcomes, and alleviating the burden on families residing outside Cape Town.

The project has three objectives: 
1.    Ensure the proper and timely management of child burn victims by providing standardised recommendations for their assessment.
2.    Improve wound care infrastructure and equipment at clinics and hospitals.
3.    Upskilling and supporting healthcare workers to confidently assess and treat child burn injuries. 

Having identified the Cape Winelands East district (specifically the Witzenberg and Breede Valley sub-districts) as priority, pilot implementation of the project will be focused there. 

What is the Children's Nursing Development Unit involvement? 

The Children's Nursing Development Unit will stand as lead for objective 3 (highlighted above) and has secured a funding grant from the Tropical Health and Education Trust (THET) for the first 18 months of project implementation. On condition of this grant, a health partnership was formed between the CNDU and Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust, bringing the expertise of Nicole Lee (Chelsea and Westminster Burns Matron) and Niall Martin (Chelsea and Westminster Burns Consultant) into the project. 

What are goal outcomes of the training objective? 

The CNDU and Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust teams will unite to achieve the following outcomes: 
1.    Improved knowledge and skills in the provision of care for children with a burn injury in nurses, and health care workers, in the Cape Winelands East region. 
2.    Improved nursing and health care worker confidence and ability to manage children with burn injuries, at each level of care and in accordance with local referral pathways and protocol.
3.    Improved collegial relationships and communication lines between nurses and health care workers across facilities.    

These will be achieved through the following key activities: 
1.    Completion and documentation of a practice and learning needs assessment in the Cape Winelands East sub-district.
2.    Design of a comprehensive contextually-appropriate training programme, inclusive of a blended training course. 
3.    Training of nurses / health workers of different cadres, and at different service levels. 

Timeline: This project will run from March 2024 through to December 2026, with the first activity – the practice and learning needs assessment – already completed  in April 2024. Read about this assessment here.