Child Health (Acute Paediatrics)
Appointments with Kent Community Health
If your child's care is provided in the community, please contact Kent Community Health Paediatrics service for any appointment queries. Kent Community Health support children with developmental disorders such as cerebral palsy, autism, muscular dystrophy and ADHD.
For children's therapies, see Kent Community Health Children's Therapies service or our Children's Musculoskeletal (MSK) Physiotherapy service.
What we do
The East Kent Hospitals Child Health Service (Acute) provides medical and surgical care in hospital for children and young people, up to the age of 16.
We also run outpatient clinics for children and young people. GP referrals are triaged on a daily basis.
Our services include:
General children's services (paediatrics)
Allergy
Cardiology
Diabetes
Endocrinology
Gastroenterology
Immunology
Metabolic disorders
Nephrology
Neurology
Oncology
Respiratory
Rheumatology.
If your child needs urgent but not life-threatening care for an injury or illness, please use our urgent care centres. For life-threatening emergencies, find your local accident and emergency care.
About your appointment
Your child’s appointment letter explains where you need to go for their appointment and how to get there. You will also receive a text message reminding you about the date, time and location of the appointment.
Your child will be seen by the consultant or a member of the consultant’s team.
Scans, including MRI and ultrasound
Your child's scan will be under the care of our Radiology team. If you have any questions about an upcoming scan appointment, please contact our Radiology team.
Preparing for your appointment
Please arrive 15 minutes before your appointment so that your child’s height and weight can be measured by a healthcare assistant
Please remember to bring all usual medications or list them, including dosages/strength of each tablet and the number of times/days they take each one.
Don’t worry if you forget what you discussed in your consultation. You and your GP will be sent a letter with all the details.
How to book your child’s blood test
To book your child’s blood test, you need to call one of the following numbers:
For children under age 5, please call 01227 868678
For children over age 5, please call 01227 206739.
Accessibility and assistance
If you or your child need any accessibility assistance or communication support, such as an interpreter, please let us know. You can call the East Kent Hospitals Child Health Service on 01227 868678, or find out more about our hospital accessibility.
Contact our Child Health team
To contact the East Kent Hospitals Acute Child Health service, please use the details below.
If you are unable to attend your appointment and need to change or cancel it, please call the East Kent Hospitals Child Health Service on 01227 868678. Our lines are open Monday to Friday, from 8.30am to 4.30pm.
If your child's care is provided in the community, please contact Kent Community Health Paediatrics service.
Our children’s wards
We have two children’s wards, for medical care that needs an overnight stay:
Rainbow Ward is our general children’s medical ward at Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital
Padua Ward is our general children’s medical ward at William Harvey Hospital.
For children having minor procedures, which do not need an overnight stay, we have:
Dolphin Ward in the Day Unit at Kent and Canterbury Hospital.
Visiting information
Parents and carers can visit their child on our wards at any time. Visiting hours for other visitors are 10am to 8pm. Please try to avoid visiting around mealtimes so children can eat uninterrupted. No more than 2 visitors are allowed at a time for each bed and visiting children must be supervised.
Where to find our outpatient clinics
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital outpatients department is in Broadstairs Suite
William Harvey Hospital outpatients department is on Padua Ward
Kent and Canterbury Hospital outpatients can be found at the Children’s Assessment Centre.
See getting to our hospitals for maps of these sites.