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Screening of unaccompanied asylum seeking children and young persons
- Agatha OkahBirmingham Children's Hospital
Key points
- Numbers of unaccompanied asylum seeking children coming for screening rose suddenly after Covid.
- The audit found the time scale from initial health assessment to investigation did not meet the target, and some results were not actioned.
- Many of these children had low vitamin D levels, and a few had positive TB screens that were negative on further tests.
Agatha Okah, Birmingham Children's Hospital, discusses her work on screening unaccompanied asylum seeking children and young persons (UASCYP) in Warwickshire. A recent surge in the number of UASCYP coming for check ups led to adverse events due to missed disease identification in these patients. Dr Okah and her team identified that there was a delay in investigations after screening and a further delay in communication for treatment. Incidental findings also showed low vitamin D levels identified in UASCYP. Recommendations were made based on these findings. This interview took place at the RCPCH conference 2024 in Birmingham, UK.
Read the transcript
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. It may contain errors, so check it against the video before quoting.
Okay, so I did the work about screening of unaccompanied asylum seeking children in Warwickshire. This was because pre-Covid there were a fewer number of unaccompanied children and young persons that came for screening, but after the Covid there was a sudden surge in the number of unaccompanied asylum seeking children and young persons. So because of an adverse event that happened, whereby a serious disease was missed, nearly missed actually, we decided to look into how we've been screening and investigating these unaccompanied asylum seeking children in Warwickshire area. So that was the aim of the audit.
What we then did was to look at our time scale between when these children come in for initial health assessment and when they are eventually investigated, and then we realised that based on our KPI we were not really meeting up our target. And then we also looked at the pattern of diseases or results that were positive and if these results were being communicated to the GP, the children or young person, the social workers and even their carers. And then we realised that some of these children came in and had their investigations done but the results were not actioned on.
So we thought, okay, we have to do something about this to bridge that gap between when the children actually come in to be assessed and when they have their test done and if any action has been done regarding this test, in case there is any positive results that needs to be either treated or followed up. So eventually we found out that we had a gap and we needed to work towards improving that.
We also discovered that a lot of these children, unaccompanied asylum seeking children, they mostly had low vitamin D levels. A few of them had positive TB screens and then went on to do further tests which then were negative. There was no significant positive results finding in these children. So that was what my audit was about.
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Cite this video
Agatha Okah. “Screening of unaccompanied asylum seeking children and young persons.” The Paediatric Video Journal, 30 December 2024. https://paediatricvj.com/videos/screening-of-unaccompanied-asylum-seeking-children-and-young-okah/
This interview is educational content intended for healthcare professionals and is not medical advice. Views expressed are those of the speaker. © The Paediatric Video Journal. All rights reserved.