I have been a Consultant Paediatrician at the Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust since 2008. I completed my undergraduate training in Queens University in Belfast and then my initial paediatric training in Cardiff. I have worked at the ‘coal face’ of acute general paediatrics in Yorkshire since 2001. Over the last 10 years I have worked closely with colleagues across the health system in Bradford. In 2018 this work resulted in the development of the Ambulatory Care Experience (ACE) Service that is helping to move the care of unwell children from hospital to home.

In the past 10 years there has been a significant increase in demand on paediatric secondary care services. This is unsustainable. With changes to the workforce and developments in technology, the NHS has been ripe for innovation and transformation. CoVID has fast tracked this.  In Bradford there is system level buy-in for improving quality and value with the shared vision that ‘the key to delivering effective and urgent care is ensuring that the whole system is designed to support self-care and community care at home, thereby reducing avoidable hospital admissions and facilitating timely early discharges’ (Institute for Innovation and Improvement). The future can be bright but is only sustainable through better networks and collaboration.