Dr. Andrew Wormald:

The CDNTs have learned a lot about communication. They are improving communication but the comment coming back from CDNTs is there needs to be national communication on what children get, and what they would expect of the service and the service model. A lot of problems with the communication is the expectation of the service. The model is a social model sandwiched in between two medical models so it becomes very awkward to play and for people to understand how this social model fits into the medical model. People are coming to it with medical expectations when the model centres on the family and servicing the family. The one piece of communication I have seen that is done really well is a CDNT where the person is referred to them and they send out a family link worker virtually straight away, within a month of the referral. This worker goes into the house, meets the family and assesses the referral based on the meeting with the people rather than on a piece of paper work. This worker will tell the family about the service, what they can expect, what the CDNT will deliver, when they will deliver, sees what the family needs, and then feeds back to the team anything that may be missing off the referral papers as well.