A WARD dedicated to caring for seriously ill teenagers at an Oxford Hospital will be closed because of a lack of nurses, it emerged last night.

On Sunday, Melanie’s Ward at Oxford Children’s Hospital, which is a dedicated 12-bed adolescent unit, will shut.

Staff working on the ward were informed last Friday and patients, all aged between 12 and 16, will be sent to other wards for treatment.

The Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals Trust denied the move was a cost cutting measure and promised it would re-open on September 26.

The move follows last summer’s controversial decision to temporarily close the high-risk pregnancy Silver Star unit.

Last night, the ORH said it could not promise other wards would not be affected in the coming months.

A former patient of Melanie’s Ward said a lot of people would be upset about the move.

She said: “It completely goes against what the ward is all about, caring for adolescents in a dedicated area.

“So many people have fundraised for the ward because they have been so touched by the way they have been cared for there. It is terrible to just leave it empty for 10 weeks.”

Melanie’s Ward is named after former patient Melanie Richardson.

Her family were involved in raising about £750,000 in the mid 1990s for the ward, and in 2006, it moved into the new Children’s Hospital.

The ORH said a problem with maternity leave, staff vacancies and a natural seasonal decrease in patients had prompted the decision.

It had not provided forecast figures for the number of patients it expected to treat over the summer.

The hospital needs 342 full-time nurses to keep the Children’s Hospital, Paediatric Intensive Care Unit, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and Special Care Baby Unit running.

However, the Oxford Mail has learned 23 are on maternity leave and 40 posts are vacant. There are 32 new nurses due to start at the trust, but not until mid September.

Anne Thomson, divisional director of Children and Women’s, said she could not rule out the possibility services will continue to be reshuffled year after year.

She said: “We always close some beds in the Children’s Hospital during the summer, as there is a natural seasonal decrease in workload.

“This year, extra pressures as a result of maternity leave and staff vacancies have led to the decision to group patients in our main ward areas, so that the hospital can keep open the maximum number of beds and redistribute skills.

“While Melanie’s Ward is closed, adolescent patients will be cared for in one of the other wards in the Children’s Hospital, appropriate to their care needs, and when possible, young people will be accommodated together.

“We will be encouraging GPs in the north of the county to use the Horton as their first choice for children when they anticipate an overnight stay. The Horton has 14 dedicated children’s beds, these are frequently underused.”

The questions we asked: Q: When will it close? Is there a date for it to reopen?

A: These changes are temporary and there is a definite date for Melanie’s Ward to reopen. The changes will be for 10 weeks from July 18 to September 26, 2011.

Q: Is this a cost-saving measure?

A: No – this is about twin staffing pressures the trust has at this time as a result of a significant number of vacancies (which have been filled, but 32 new staff members do not start until mid September) and a peak in maternity leave. There are about 178 nurses at the Children’s Hospital alone. We have recently increased the overall number of beds in the children’s hospital itself, and in PICU (psychiatric unit) and NICU (neonatal unit); and as a result of this and natural staff turnover, we needed to recruit additional staff this year.

In total, we needed to recruit 40 extra nursing staff and so far we have recruited to 32.

Q: Considering the challenging financial climate and in light of Government cut backs, can the trust rule out this annual reshuffling of services happening year after year?

A: No, we can’t do that. The hospital must run services as efficiently as it can. Sometimes this might mean opening new beds and closing others. It is all part of the normal process of caring for patients. Beds have closed at the Children’s Hospital before during the summer months. This time however, instead of having fewer beds spread across the five inpatient wards, the trust has decided to close a group of beds during the summer months.