Children and Young People with Exceptional Healthcare Needs Network

The Children and Young People with Exceptional Healthcare Needs (CEN) Network was established in April 2009 with the aim to strengthen and develop specialist services for children with complex healthcare needs in Scotland.

The purpose of the Network is to ensure that each child is fully and appropriately assessed, and has access to a full range of specialist care, underpinned by evidence based, professionally developed and agreed clinical pathways and protocols.

The assessment criteria used to identify the exceptional healthcare needs children are based on the support needs system (SNS), however the assessment criteria can also be used on children who are not in the SNS system. The six impairment categories used for assessing the children and young people are:

learning and mental functions
communication
motor skills
self care
hearing
vision

A child or young person (up to the age of 19) is defined as having exceptional healthcare needs if they:

have severe impairment recorded in at least four categories together with enteral/ parenteral feeding
OR
have severe impairment recorded in at least two categories and require ventilation/CPAP
AND
the impairments are sustained, lasting for more than six months and ongoing.

Further information on the network can be found on the external Children with Exceptional Healthcare Needs Network website. National Services Division are not responsible for the content of any external sites.

Annual Report

The most recent annual report for the Network is available on the:

Children with Exceptional Healthcare Needs website [external website]

Contact details:

Ms Dawn Moss, Lead Clinician
Dr Marit Boot, Network Manager

Service contact address:

NMCN Office
NHS Lothian
Administration Building
Astley Ainslie Hospital
133 Grange Loan
Edinburgh
EH9 2HL

National Services Division contacts:

To contact members of NSD staff, please visit our staff contacts page.

Catriona Johnson, Programme Manager
Louise Wilson, Assistant Programme Manager
Hannah Cornish, Programme Support Officer