About the UK Community Children’s Nurses Network

The United Kingdom Community Children’s Nursing Network (UKCCNN) aims to support the community children’s nursing (CCN) workforce through collaboration and best practice development.

Our mission is to ensure Babies, Children and Young People (BCYP) with complex health needs in the community setting are supported to live their best possible life alongside their peers, with best practice, evidence-based care and a workforce equipped with complex skills required to manage their needs and keep them in the community where ever possible.

Aims

The aims of the UK CCNN are:

• to raise the profile of community children’s nursing workforce and the complex care CCNs deliver every day;
• to provide a network of support across the UK to CCNs, enabling discussions and opportunity to share questions and experiences;
• to build best practice and evidence-based guidance, reducing inequality across the UK in service provision;
• to influence national policy around Babies, Children and Young People (BCYP) with complex health needs in community settings;
• to raise the Voice of Community Children’s Nursing Workforce on behalf of our Babies, Children and Young People.

Gains

By joining the UK CCNN you gain:

• connection and network with Community Children’s practitioners from across the United Kingdom, sharing and developing best practice;
• invitations to the bi-monthly UK CCN Network meetings, minutes, documents and recordings network meetings;
• access to presentations by outside speakers invited to network meetings;
• continued professional development towards NMC revalidation;
• opportunity to join network subgroups focusing on key issues: 1. Blended Diets; 2. Equipment and Consumables; 3. Pathway for Specialist Practice Qualification CCN; 4. Supporting children and young people with complex health needs/educational disabilities in education settings (joint with SAPHNA).

Get involved

• Join the network to connect with community children’s practitioners from across the United Kingdom and raise the voice of CCN workforce on behalf of our babies, children and young people.
• Follow the network on Twitter: @CareCCN.

Background

The UK CCNN was developed in Summer 2020 to support the community children’s nursing (CCN) workforce through collaboration and best practice development.

It originated from a network of CCNs brought together by Becky Bedford, who created the Twitter @CareCCN, to discuss how we support Children and Young People (CYP) who required Aerosol Generating Procedures (AGP) in education settings, returning to school during COVID-19 with national guidance in place. The network shared best practice, developed guidance and lobbied to change national policy to ensure CYP requiring AGP at school could be integrated back into education alongside their peers without discrimination.

The UK CCNN has continued to grow in numbers since and become a significant collective of CCNs across the four countries of the UK with a passion for driving forward best practice, with six core members leading the network: Becky Hepworth from Isle of Wight, Sian Hooban from Wales,  Jane Mulcahy from Sussex,  Maeve Murray from Northern Ireland, Becky Bedford from Bedford and Rebecca Daniels from London. In February 2022, UK CCNN partnered with the Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI), enabling the network voice to strengthen, with UK CCNN chair Rebecca Daniels working part-time at the QNI as CCN Project Lead.