Seriously ill children in the Hywel Dda Health Board area are to benefit from the latest addition to the unique and growing team of WellChild Children's Nurses which continues to spread across the UK.

WellChild, the national charity for sick children, has invested more than £150,000 in the creation of a brand new post at Hywel Dda Health Board - with a focus on helping seriously ill children with complex health needs across Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire to leave hospital and return home with the care and treatment they need.

The WellChild children's nurse Lynda McMahon will be in post from 2011. She will be part of the Children's Development Team and will work with families from a wide population of around 375,200 people, arranging and coordinating the care needed for children to live at home as well as providing emotional and practical support.

In those parts of the UK where there is still no WellChild children's nurse to provide a link between all the health professionals and different services required to care for a child with complex health needs, children can remain in hospital for months, even years, when it is better for their emotional and physical wellbeing to be at home with their families. It is also more cost efficient to care for a child at home than in hospital.

Hywel Dda Health Board welcomed the new post, saying: "We are delighted that, thanks to WellChild, we can now provide this invaluable service to help minimise what might otherwise be unnecessarily lengthy stays in hospital. It is hard to imagine how overwhelming it can be for a family to cope with the continual demands involved with having a sick child. Now we can remove the additional stresses placed on them when their child is separated from family and friends for long periods."

WellChild's pilot children's nurse programme began in 2006, and the success of that scheme has resulted in the creation of permanent posts in Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Liverpool, London, Oxford, Barrow-in-Furness and Cardiff. A further nurse will be added to the team in Arran and Ayrshire in 2011.

WellChild continues to fundraise to add to its team so that long-term sick children across the United Kingdom will benefit from these services.

WellChild's programme ensures that each new nurse appointment has a long-lasting impact. A WellChild children's nurse costs approximately £55,000 per year, with the charity provides funding for the first three years. The relevant local healthcare authority is then obliged to continue that post's funding and management to guarantee an on-going legacy of care.

Linda Partridge, WellChild's director of programmes, said: "We have worked to make sure that the essential service now provided by WellChild children's nurses in regions of the UK have a long-reaching impact. Our target is for every seriously ill child or young person to have access to a WellChild children's nurse, and I am delighted that we have now been able to further extend that support into Wales."