Parents baffled by long trips for hospital checks

Kay said the time needed to take her children to hospital appointments led to her changing jobs

Families complaining their town has too few children's medical services say they do not expect improvements any time soon - with one mum even changing jobs in a bid for easier access.

Parents in rural Ludlow say they are having to travel miles for essential appointments unavailable closer to home, despite the area having a community hospital.

Last week, the BBC reported on a warning from a mum, a member of Ludlow Town Council, who advised "don't be a kid here".

Health bosses responded to say there had been recent investment in provision and sought to do more. But families sharing their experiences this week are not hopeful their frustrations will ease, or their journeys get shorter.

Ludlow Community Hospital remains open but parents say they are instead sent to Shrewsbury or Telford for short visits including eye clinic services and hearing tests, racking up 60 miles in round trips every time their children have appointments.

Without a car, an expensive taxi ride is required, or a train journey and then a bus.

Additionally, a midwife-led birthing unit at the community hospital shut in 2018, leaving Princess Royal Hospital, Telford's acute site, as the only alternative for expectant mothers in the county.

Among those to complain is mum Kay. She said she changed jobs to work more flexibly because taking her 12-year-old daughter Matilda and 10-year-old son Milo to eye clinics in Shrewsbury became so time consuming.

"They have to go every six months, both of them do. And the appointments only last 20 minutes, if that really," she said.

"But it takes such a long time to get there, it's an hour to get there and you have to allow for parking and it's an hour to come back. It's such a big chunk of the day and they're missing time off school."

Matilda is frustrated too. She said: "Well of course not everybody likes school but it always feels like sometimes I'm missing important things when I'm not at school.

"Like I missed a test once and I had to do that on one of the days when it was a 'fun day'."

Milo added: "It annoys me because I could just go to Ludlow."

Ludlow Town councillor Stacey Harris said it was not straightforward to get her son to hospital appointments

The councillor who issued the warning was mum Stacey Harris, who this week has been sharing more of her experience from her home in the town.

Standing on her doorstep with her two-year-old son in her arms, she pointed downhill, explaining: "Ludlow Community Hospital is a five-minute walk... and we still have to travel 30 miles to Telford or Shrewsbury to get basic healthcare."

Her son needs hearing tests and speech and language therapy but getting to Royal Shrewsbury Hospital or Princess Royal is not straightforward.

"We've only got one car so my husband has to take time off work... and it means it's a whole day," she said. "I have to get my mum to collect my other children from school.

"Trains and buses are too time consuming and too expensive."

As someone representing many working families, she said others were also travelling long distances for short appointments.

"I've had people come to me from all over Ludlow saying they have to go for regular check-ups and tests and eyesight tests and things like that and they always have to go to Shrewsbury or Telford," she explained.

Families said despite having the community hospital nearby, they were instead sent elsewhere for short appointments for their children

Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Integrated Care System (ICS) declined the BBC's request for an interview but a spokesperson said the body was committed to building on its community offer, in line with the government's 10-year NHS plan to move more services from hospitals closer to people's homes.

They said the ICS had worked to deliver more services including the development of the Ludlow and Community Family Hub.

"Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust continues to provide services in people's homes, schools and clinics," they added.

The spokesperson said the children's audiology services was expected to return from Telford to Shrewsbury "once construction work associated with the hospitals transformation programme is complete".

But the families interviewed by the BBC said the distance from Ludlow to Shrewsbury was almost the same as that to Telford, so the move would not help them.

Nor did they feel hopeful about getting other appointments closer to home.

"They tell us lots of lovely things but they never seem to deliver quite on that which is really frustrating for us when we've got our little hospital that we're all fighting to keep," Harris said.

Care minister Stephen Kinnock told be BBC when informed of Ludlow families' experience: "What I would say is that [the] community hospital could potentially be one of the new neighbourhood health centres.

"Some of the neighbourhood health centres will be new-build but a lot of them will be about re-purposing assets that the NHS currently has, including for example community hospitals.

"What we've found with some community hospitals is that the services they offer have become narrower and narrower and narrower. We're looking to identify areas where we can get neighbourhood health centres, one stop shops, working across general practice, pharmacy, mental health, physio, eye care, ear care, whatever may be required and [the community hospital in Ludlow] could potentially be an asset that could be re-purposed to become a neighbourhood health centre."