Events

Donna Cleary from the Centenary Women’s and Children’s Hospital, ACT, will kindly share her journey in creating an effective paediatric HITH service. Donna will provide an overview on the preparation of the successful business, though to the set-up, management, and maintenance of a new and effective paediatric HITH service. As always, we invite you to join us for an engaged discussion and sharing of your own service experiences. Time allowing, we will then delve into experiences of establishing and running efficient Paediatric Short Stay Unit services.

Join us to help shape the program for the CHA Medication Safety Face-to-Face Meeting on 26–27 May 2025! This interactive web conference will provide an opportunity to refine session topics, share insights, and contribute ideas to this year’s agenda.

The webinar will provide a case study of a 12-month co-design process conducted with young people with chronic illness to create Coping Compass, a new brief online positive psychology program which aims to support young people’s coping skills and wellbeing in the face of health challenges. This webinar will provide an overview of the co-design process, highlighting effective strategies for engaging youth people with chronic conditions.

We’re excited to announce the launch of the CHA Consumer Engagement Leaders Network—a group for paediatric leaders passionate about working alongside consumers, including the children, young people, and families we care for. This network is all about sharing strategies, solutions, and initiatives to improve the consumer experience in ways that truly matter to them. It’s a chance to connect, collaborate, and explore new ideas that make a real difference.

ISAID is a novel model of care for children and adolescents with ASD and/or ID who present to the ED with BOC. It is a multidisciplinary, collaborative initiative between acute health and community-based services. Support is provided for three months, after which care is transitioned to community providers via case conferencing and summary report. Key aims include improving parent/carer confidence in managing behaviours of concern and sense of safety, and quality of life for the whole family.

Across Australia and other high-income countries, hospitals are struggling to meet demand. More children are waiting on long outpatient clinic lists or attending emergency departments for conditions that could be managed in primary care. However, primary care needs support to manage these children. We co-designed, piloted and have now tested in a rigorous stepped wedge trial – the Strengthening Care for Children model. We will discuss our trial findings including which conditions GPs wanted help/education for, impacts on referral patterns to hospital and to private paediatricians, and impacts on family confidence and preference for primary care.

The Paediatric Emergency Education Program (PEEP) is a new free peer-reviewed resource featuring over 50 Case-Based Discussions (CBDs) on common paediatric emergency presentations, such as the febrile neonate, preschool wheeze, and head injury. The resources are suitable for nurses, nurse practitioners and doctors, and can flexibly be used to support paediatric emergency-based teaching sessions.

The first CHA web conference of 2025 will explore Cerebral Palsy (CP) programs and Models of Care, emphasizing the importance of timely and early intervention, which can make a lifetime of difference for children and their families.