Join us in celebrating 30 years of Nursing Children and Young People

This month marks 30 years since the launch of the first journal for children’s nurses in the UK

Some 30 years after publication of the Platt Report in 1959, Paediatric Nursing aimed to inform a growing number of nurses being registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) through educational pathways established by Project 2000.  

The journal flourished against a backdrop of policy change, not least those stimulated by the 2001 publication of the Report of the Public Inquiry at the Bristol Royal Infirmary 1984-1995, which confirmed suspicions about serious flaws in the governance of children’s services, and demonstrated the need for specific provision and standards. 

‘Nursing Children and Young People was reoriented towards the unique contributions of children’s nurses’

In 2004, the national service framework for children, young people and maternity services amalgamated previous recommendations and set out an implementation plan spanning ten years. Although now a distant memory, the framework allowed commissioners and the Care Quality Commission to monitor children’s services against an agreed set of quality indicators.  

Paediatric Nurse is not a title recognised by the NMC and in 2011 the journal was rebranded to Nursing Children and Young People. This reoriented it away from the medical profession towards the unique contributions of children’s nurses, as is reflected by the diversity of its articles and broader readership.

Over the next decade we can expect technological advances in communication, diagnosis and documentation. More attention will be paid to sustaining staff numbers and assuring their competence, and more credence will be given to children and their parents or carers. Nursing Children and Young People will continue to monitor these developments for all of its readers.

Annette Dearmun is associate lecturer at Oxford Brooke’s University, nurse consultant at Fullflight Ltd, and consultant editor Nursing Children and Young People