Expanding your Transition Service to Support Young Adults

Louise is a Registered Children’s Nurse who also has a degree in Business Management. Her role is National Lead Nurse for The Burdett National Transition Nursing Network. 

Louise has been funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing since 2015, working in a project management role, supporting all services in Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust (LTHT) to identify best practice transition pathways for children and young people with a long term conditions, when moving from children's to adult services. 

Alongside the transition project Louise supported the running of the Leeds Teaching Hospitals Youth Forum, Leeds Childrens Hospital TV (LCHTV) and Learning Disabilities, Autism and Hidden Disabilities Staff Champions and supported the development of LTHT youth work team. Louise has also formed and is chair of the Yorkshire and Humber Transition Network group and the National Transition Leads Network group. 

Owing to the success of the transition project in Leeds Louise was appointed to the role of National Lead Nurse for The Burdett National Transition Nursing Network in April 2019. The network will be funded by the Burdett Trust for three years, with the aim of rolling out the quality improvement model, developed and tested in Leeds, across England.

Dawn has over 30 years’ experience working across the public sector including local government and the NHS, and in the independent and voluntary sectors in project management and education roles. 

She currently works for Skills for Health, as a Senior Consultant, who are a not-for-profit organisation working with the health sector across the UK on workforce development needs. Dawn has a specific interest in workforce development with both primary and secondary care as well as with the development of education, training and competency and apprenticeship frameworks across the UK including assisting organisations implement these as part of their workforce solutions with the aim of improving the quality of patient care. 

She has been project managing the new ‘Core capabilities framework for all healthcare staff to ensure high quality care of young people: including supporting them as they transition from children’s into adult services’ on behalf of NHS England and NHS Improvement and will be sharing its development at the conference.

Matt Guest is the Youth Work Manager at Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust. He manages a growing team of youth workers who offer a wide range of Psychosocial support to young people aged 13-25. After completing his degree in Criminology and a Post Graduate Diploma in Youth and Community Work, Matt worked as a detached (street based) youth worker in the North East of England. This involved targeting areas with a team of youth workers with the purpose of reducing a number of factors including vandalism, teenage pregnancy, teenage drinking, drug use and crime. The projects were audited by the Police and Council services. 

After a number of successful Detached projects Matt moved to the Anti-Bullying Service in which he was responsible for delivering bullying legislation training to schools, working with victims and perpetrators of bullying and delivering mediation sessions between sets of young people and their families. Matt then moved onto managing one of the 5 main youth centres in County Durham. In this role he was responsible for managing a team of youth workers who planned, delivered and evaluated youth work provision to the Stanley Ward in County Durham. 

Matt saw a new opportunity in the NHS and successfully gained employment in Leeds, moving down to Yorkshire to start a new chapter in his career. Matt has a special interest in learning how psychosocial support can help young people to become more resilient, be healthier, realise aspirations and life goals and be happier living with a long term health condition; as well as be a financially viable option for the NHS moving forward.

Stephanie is a GP partner in a group practice covering a diverse inner city population of 15,000 in Lambeth, South London and founder and Clinical Director of the Well Centre, a young person’s integrated health hub with Primary Care, Health and Wellbeing Link workers and CAMHS. 

She has a special interest in developing accessible, young people friendly services in Primary Care and developing targeted services to more vulnerable groups of young people. 

She is a member of the RCGP Adolescent Health Group.

Nina Heighington is a CYP nurse with an in interest in young people’s health, who is passionate about transition and supporting CYP with medical complexities.