The Royal Pharmaceutical Society, alongside a newly established group of 20 royal colleges and professional bodies, has written to the First Minister of Wales to ask how his government will improve child health and support the workforce that cares for them.

The letter to the First Minster coincides with the formation of the Welsh Royal Colleges Child Health Collaborative, which aims to ensure a sharper focus and understanding of the support required for babies, children and young people and the workforce that cares for them.

As well as staff members, RPS Wales will be represented in the group by Anthony Lewis, Children and Women Lead Pharmacist at Cardiff and Vale University Health Board.

Commenting on the new collaborative, Anthony said:

“I’m delighted to be able to be a part of and represent RPS in this exciting new collaborative that I’m sure will bring to the forefront the profile of child health in Wales.

“Together with the RPS Wales team, I’ll also be highlighting important pharmacy and medicines management priorities such as medicines safety and spreading best practice in medicines support for children like the KidzMedz initiative. We will highlight that pharmacy expertise is always part of the team supporting children and their families; from highly specialist care in hospitals to care closer to home in the community.

“We’re now looking forward to hearing back from the First Minister and hope the Welsh Government will commit to working with us to improve health outcomes for children in Wales”.   

RPS Wales Chair, Dr Geraldine McAffrey added:

“At RPS Wales we’re delighted to be a part of this important work and are incredibly grateful to Anthony for joining us as an expert member of the collaborative. We know that his deep knowledge and expertise will be so valuable to this work and will ensure that important issues relating to medicines and the specialist paediatric pharmacy workforce will be heard.”

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