What is a Transforming Care Navigator?
A Transforming Care Navigator is an individual that has experience of working with children and young people (0-18 years) with a learning disability and/or autism and will join your current care team to support you and your family.
We acknowledge that you and your family understand your care needs the best, therefore, a Navigator is someone that will work with you to get to know what you are great at and to identify what you or your family might need help and support with.
A Navigator might do this by:
- visiting you at home, in the community or at school
- talking to you or your family on the telephone
- helping you to understand your care and support options, so you feel confident to make decisions
- helping you and your family to talk to professionals and to attend meetings with you
- helping you to access services that might be able to help you
- giving you information in a way that works for you and will help you to understand what treatment is available to you
- helping you to understand how the health, education and social care teams work together
- being the main contact for you and your family
- making sure that you are as involved as you want to be.
Who are the Navigators?
There are five Navigators working across Norfolk and Waveney. Navigators will not replace any of your existing care team; they are an extra person to support you and your family and will take the time to learn what is important to you and what works best for you.
Navigators will keep you and your family at the centre of decision making so that decisions will be made with you, not for you.
Am I eligible for Navigator support?
To be eligible for Navigator support, you must have a diagnosis of a Learning Disability and/or Autism.
For the first 12 months of the project, Navigator support will be prioritised to those children and young people currently in a Tier 4 hospital and those identified as at risk of hospital admission, as defined by the Dynamic Support Register (DSR).
The DSR holds information about young people and what areas of their care may require enhanced community support. The information helps services to work more closely together to manage a person’s support effectively and ensure good outcomes in the community. We are hopeful that if the pilot is successful, we will be able to offer a Navigator to many more families.
The outcome
- You are safely discharged from hospital.
- You feel listened to, informed and involved.
- You experience a reduction in stress and uncertainty with increased stability.
- You receive timely access to the right personalised support.
- Assessment, care and support are integrated across health, education and social care.
- Well planned and managed transitions take place between services.
- You feel safe, happy, informed and listened too.
- You feel involved in your care planning.
- You understand the Care, Education and Treatment Review (CETR) process and feel able to participate.
- You are able to access a personalised health budget, if that is your preference.
Gaining your feedback
We want to make sure we listen to your experiences and use these to better meet your needs and the needs of other young people like you in the future. To help us achieve this, we will ask you and your family what you think about your Navigator support. Your Navigator will discuss with you how you would be most comfortable giving your feedback.
As this is a national pilot, your feedback is really important to help us understand if having a Navigator is an effective way to support families and to prevent a crisis intervention. We believe that it is imperative to develop these services with young people and their families as it helps us to build a better service for families in the future.
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