Care in the Thames Valley
The Tom’s Trust Thames Valley region service opened at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford in autumn 2024. We fund a clinical neuropsychologist to exclusively support the needs of children and young people with brain tumours, and their families.
Dr Emily Townsend, Tom’s Trust clinical psychologist at Oxford Children’s Hospital
The Thames Valley region
The John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford belongs to the Oxford University Hospitals (OUH) group – a world-renowned centre of clinical excellence. It is also one of the largest NHS teaching trusts in the UK. The paediatric neuro-oncology service in Oxford is the Principal Treatment Centre (PTC) for the Thames Valley region and reaches Swindon, Milton Keynes, Slough, Wycombe, Reading, and Northampton. In this region there are approximately 30-40 children and young people diagnosed with brain and spinal tumours per year, often followed up by the service for up to 10-years post treatment.
The impact of the Thames Valley service
Before the Tom’s Trust service was introduced to the region, access to clinical neuro/psychology was allocated on a priority basis to those currently receiving treatment and on high-risk treatment pathways. Off-treatment patients and their families faced long waits for specialist psychology input or were signposted to local community services. There was also only very limited provision to provide clinical psychology support for families on palliative pathways and there was no dedicated NHS clinical neuro/psychology time for bereavement support.
We launched the Thames Valley service last October and since then the team, of Dr Emily Townsend, Clinical Psychologist and Dr Jeni Tregay, Paediatric Neuropsychologist, who we fund for supervision and management time, has made a huge impact:
-They have seen a 200% increase in service provision (113 extra patient contacts) in the last four months
-All children on their waiting lists for cognitive assessment and therapeutic work have now been offered appointments.
The team is now working on ensuring that children already seen by the service have up to date follow-up cognitive assessments and are offered a greater depth of psychological support (up to 12 sessions of individual therapy) to children and young people with brain tumours, their parents, and siblings. Emily has also been building relationships with the NHS team as well, organisations such as the Child Brain Injury Trust (CBIT) and Young Lives versus Cancer (YLvC) and the educational settings that the children she supports belong to.