Children’s service

We provide routine and specialist care for children with all dermatological conditions, from atopic eczema to rare genodermatoses (genetically determined skin disorders). We provide a full service for children with severe inflammatory dermatoses and we are a national centre for treating children with ichthyosis and keratodermas.

Consultant dermatologists Dr David Paige, Dr Edel O’Toole and Dr Mary Glover are part of the multidisciplinary team providing care for children and their families. Our paediatric dermatology nurse specialist, Jean Robinson, can provide education and support for children and their families in both hospital and home settings as well as liaison with primary health care and education services.

We recognise that children with skin disease need ongoing care at home and school, and the service maintains strong links with local community children’s nursing teams and other primary health care professionals and education staff.

Working with our colleagues in plastic surgery, we provide a full diagnostic and treatment skin surgery service.

We have ongoing research into the underlying genetic cause of atopic eczema and keratodermas.

Eczema in children: we have pioneered a community-based model of care for atopic eczema (which affects 20 per cent of children). There has been an understanding that children with eczema are seen by a number of healthcare providers such as their GPs in the community, specialist skin doctors in hospitals and both community and hospital-based children’s nurses. The service has been developed to link primary care, one senior specialist skin nurse and hospital skin doctors to provide a seamless service for managing eczema. The ‘ team’ also includes the advocacy services to help communication with families and the play specialists in hospitals who help children through difficult procedures such as blood tests and skin biopsies.

This has been highly successful in that there has been a significant decrease in hospital admission rates and been a model that other regions have copied. Dr David Paige and clinical nurse specialist Jean Robinson have frequently been asked to lecture on this service development at national meetings and by the National Eczema Society charity.

A recent audit of this service has shown high levels of satisfaction from patients and their families. This service currently serves Tower Hamlets and Hackney but will expand to include Newham in late 2007. A children skin nurse specialist will be appointed to help develop eczema management in Newham both at the hospital level and in patients’ homes in the community.

For more information about children’s services at Barts and The London please click here.