Shaping policy and advocacy

RCPCH is a voice for those who often can’t speak for themselves.

Our members care for the health and wellbeing of children and young people across the four nations, and we support that care by making sure the right policies are in place.

Whether that care is offered in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales, the College has consistently called on governments to make the needs of children and young people a priority. We equally support our members and often speak on their behalf to protect the integrity of their profession.

The College was visible in Westminster with 10 parliamentary briefings written and sent to MPs and Peers and eight parliamentary committee responses to Select Committee inquiries. This is further strengthened by our Parliamentary Panel, an all-member group working to ensure our public affairs and campaigns work reflects members’ priorities and concerns. We made increased investment across the College to shore up our offerings and strengthen our training programmes. Generous support from partners like NHS England made it possible for the College to engage in high quality research and audits.

We published three national audits—National Paediatric Diabetes, Epilepsy12 and National Neonatal. These resources help our members make improvements in service, provide better care and treatment provision.

Epilepsy QI Programme (EQIP) 2022/23 begins with launch of the new EQIP microsite. Nearly 20 NHS Trusts are participating in an eight-month quality improvement training programme and shared learning to end in spring 2022.

Additionally we were awarded funding by NHS England for a quality improvement programme which aims to centrally support and develop paediatric epilepsy teams throughout England.

We partner with other Royal Medical Colleges and charitable organisations for research and to influence policy in the following areas:

Children’s Health Policy Influencing Group

Obesity Health Alliance Inequalities in Health Alliance

UK Health Alliance on Climate Change

End Child Poverty and Keep the Lifeline

Leading the way in Children’s Health

Letter from the Treasurer

2020-21 was intended to be a year where we restored business as usual, reset priorities and recovered “post pandemic“.

Despite the continued challenges of Covid-19, we largely met these goals. Our main income streams –membership and examinations performed well, with increase in membership , and restoration of income from examinations . We were able to maintain all key services with staff mainly working remotely, and meetings, committees and events running online. We were also able to continue with project work on EDI and climate change.

IT resources were developed to support the remote working, online events and exams. We also undertook major refurbishment of the College building to upgrade facilities for staff and members and support hybrid working. Doing all of this alongside careful financial management to reduce costs where possible meant we were able to recover from the deficit of the previous year and end with a surplus of £2 million. This financial position puts us on a strong footing to support our future plans as outlined in our 2021-24 strategy.

Dr Liz Marder Treasurer, Member of Board of Trustees RCPCH