/Our Services (A-Z)/Nutrition and dietetics (children)

Children's nutrition and dietetics

We support children with a wide range of nutrition and health problems.

About the service

The Nutrition and Dietetics team are offering most of their service via telephone and remote digital consultations, as for many it is just as effective with the added benefits of being more flexible. However, where it is deemed clinically appropriate, support will be offered face to face in a clinic venue or with you at home.

We kindly ask that all patients wear a face mask at consultations. This is to reduce the risk of infection from COVID-19.

Who’s it for?

Our children’s nutrition and dietetic service is a citywide service supporting children, aged 0 to 15 years (19 for learning disabilities), with a wide range of nutrition and health problems including:

Non IgE Cow’s Milk intolerance or allergy (sometimes in combination with soya allergy or intolerance)
Nutrition support, for example, low weigh or delayed growth
Nutrition assessment, for example, iron deficiency
Assessment of restricted diets or eating problems
Support for patients who tube feed and their families (including input to specialist inclusive learning centres)

We work with the family to identify the changes that are needed and support the person and any carers by providing practical and accurate information.

Referrals

We accept referrals from GPs, community paediatricians, school nurses, specialist nurses, health visitors, and allied health professionals (AHPs). Referral information can be found on Leeds Health Pathways.

On referral, the service may offer a consultation at a local clinic.

Resources

You said, we did

We carried out a survey with you during the initial COVID-19 lockdown to gauge your views on how we were doing and how we could improve our service going forward, with new ways of working.

This project involved collating feedback from our patients, with a view to support our service re-set and continually improving the quality of our service; working in partnership with our families in providing an outstanding service safely. After designing an electronic survey for sending to patients, we collated the data and presented results and produced a poster for our staff and our patients. This is an ongoing project; inspiring other healthcare providers to contribute towards their continuous improvement.

Our survey found out that:

58% of our families were happy with the communication they received from us during the changes to our service, due to Covid-19; 38% liked not needing to travel for the Dietitian appointment; 13% would like to be able to continue to see the Dietitian on video, whilst in the comfort of their own home; however, 21% would prefer to see the Dietitian in person.

Following this feedback, and going forward, to improve our service, we are now considering:

Offering more video consultations as well as our telephone appointments
Regular face-to-face weighing clinics across the city
More and regular face-to-face consultation clinics
More resources that patients can have access to anytime, such as online resources.

This is an image of a QR code which can be scanned by a mobile phone and takes you to an online survey to provide feedback about Children’s Dietetic services.