Neighbourhood Night Service

The Neighbourhood Night Service is part of a wider multi-disciplinary team and ensures that there is 24/7 nursing care for patients in the community. The Neighbourhood Night Service operates from 21:30pm – 07:00am, seven days per week, across the whole of Leeds providing care for patients requiring nursing intervention in their own home. During our operating hours we can be contacted on 0300 003 0045.

What you can expect from us

One of the key aims of the service is to prevent unnecessary hospital admissions and to ensure that patients with palliative care needs are able to remain in their own homes, where this is their preference. Our service has two main elements:

• Planned care
• Unplanned care

Planned care

Your neighbourhood team, hospital or hospice will have a discussion with you (and family/ carers) if they feel you would benefit from either short or long term planned care overnight. After this discussion, and in agreement with you, they will make a referral into the Neighbourhood Night Service.

Once a referral is made into the Neighbourhood Night Service we will contact the referrer and yourself to arrange for an assessment of your overnight care needs.

The assessment of needs will take place at your home between the hours of 21:45pm and 06:45am and will involve one of our nursing assistants being present for the full duration. Whilst they are in your home they will make hourly observations of your care needs. A qualified nurse (accompanied by another member of the team, as part of our lone working policy during this time period) will visit your home to complete a further assessment. The assessment is made following a discussion with the nursing assistant and observations they make themselves and this may include discussions with yourself and family members (if available) and reading your patient records.

Following the assessment we will contact your Neighbourhood Team and yourself to discuss any identified needs.

There are four possible outcomes from an assessment:

• No needs identified – at this point it is felt that you are managing your condition well and would not benefit from regular, planned intervention. You are welcome to contact the service at any point if you have unplanned needs and, should your condition change, a re-referral may be made by the Neighbourhood Team, hospital or hospice for another assessment to be made.
• Planned visits – it is identified that you have care needs overnight which can be met, just as they are during the day, by planned visits.
• One to one overnight shared* care (21:45pm - 06:45am) – it is identified that your needs are best supported by having a nursing assistant present in the home to provide support on either all, or some, nights of the week.
• An additional assessment is required to accurately determine care needs.

If overnight needs are identified, either met through planned visits or one to one overnight shared* care, care will be reviewed every two weeks, or sooner if indicated.

*shared care could be provided by NHS nursing assistants or nursing assistants from external agencies that are approved by the NHS. If care is provided by approved external agencies the time of care provision will be 10:00pm - 7:00am.

Unplanned care

If you require any advice or support with your current care needs, or the care needs of someone you are caring for, during the hours of 21:30pm - 07:00am you can call us on 0300 003 0045. Your call will be handled by our centrally based clinically led team and will be triaged appropriately – which could be a visit by our Nursing Team or may be resolved after your telephone discussions with the nurse.

You can help us:

• If you need to cancel an overnight visit, please let us know on 0300 003 0045 (between the hours of 21:30pm and 07:00am) as soon as possible. If you are aware that you no longer need a visit outside of these times, please contact your neighbourhood team and they will let us know.
• We expect to work in surroundings that are smoke free, safe and free from abuse.
• We need to use facilities to wash our hands before we care for you. Please make liquid soap and paper towels (kitchen roll) available.

If we are providing one to one overnight shared care we ask that:

• Comfortable seating is available.
• We have access to toilet facilities.
• Adequate lighting is available (we need to regularly input into your patient record).
• The home is a suitable temperature for us to work in.