Super Saturdays return to Sheffield to help improve children and young people’s healthcare

On Saturday 28 January Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust colleagues are teaming up for the first Super Saturday of the year to help children and young people access the care and support they need and reduce waiting times.

Super Saturday is a nationwide partnership, created in response to the challenges created by the COVID pandemic, including increased waiting lists. Since Super Saturdays began nationally, the efforts of teams at Sheffield Children’s have provided 500+ children and young people with care they would have otherwise had to wait longer for.

Super Saturday is a day held to highlight the work being done to reduce waiting times for children and young people, such as holding extra clinics. The day also involves events across the city to support families to take care of their health outside of visiting Sheffield Children’s. During this January Super Saturday, Sheffield Children’s will be delivering additional clinics for nearly 200 patients across dermatology, continence, community paediatrics, gastroenterology and more. We are also sharing important information to help children and young people take care of their dental health now and for the future.

Since work began recovering from waiting lists created during COVID, Sheffield Children’s has been holding extra clinics and surgeries throughout evenings and weekends to make sure patients get the care they need as soon as they can.

During the day the Smile Squad – a team of student volunteers from the Sheffield University Dentistry school – will be on hand at Sheffield Children’s Hospital. They will provide advice and free resources to help children and young people feel inspired about dental care and to feel empowered about looking after their health.

Sheffield Children’s colleagues and volunteers will also be out in the local community sharing free resources and information. The Sheffield Children’s health bus will be at ASDA in Handsworth, S13 9LR, from 9.30am-3.30pm and teams will also be on The Moor (outside the old Debenhams building) between the same hours.

Craig Radford, Chief Operating Officer at Sheffield Children’s said: “Through Super Saturdays we’ve been able to see hundreds more children, with extra appointments and surgeries taking place across the country.

“As well as reducing waiting lists, Super Saturdays allows us to work with partners, such as dentist teams, to help empower our patients and to provide children and young people out in the community with health education that can help set them up for life.

“We’re really looking forward to another great day supporting our patients and families both in the hospital and the community.”

This is the first of several Super Saturdays in 2023, with the national events returning in March and more Sheffield specific events in the pipeline, too. The first Super Saturday was held in October 2021 and further events were held in March, July and November 2022. They were originally created as part of the wider National Paediatric Accelerator Programme, an NHS England programme to address care backlogs.