PARENTS will face an anxious journey to Pembury if they want to be at the bedside of sick children who need to stay in hospital.

Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust's vision for life post-2010 and the opening of the new Pembury Hospital could spell the end for Maidstone Hospital's children's ward.

It will be replaced by a new children's day care centre taking care of emergency assessments, day care treatment and outpatients appointments.

A similar "ambulatory" centre will open at Pembury, which will also become the sole base for a single specialist inpatient's children's unit.

This centre will include rooms for parents to sleep overnight and restrooms, which the trust claims has not been possible at Maidstone.

Clinicians at Maidstone have asked for a guarantee from the trust that a child arriving at the accident and emergency department who needs to be transferred to another hospital is out of danger first. The trust says it has given those assurances .

The proposed new day units could be open for just six hours per day, although this could be extended to up to 23 hours for assessment or treatment.

Trust chiefs have yet to decide if the centres will need to remain open around the clock. If a child is seriously injured and requires an ambulance, paramedics would be expected to head for the nearest emergency care centre with paediatric cover. That may not be Maidstone.

But the trust claims the centralising of paediatric services is already happening. Children with head injuries are already transfered from Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells because neither has a paediatric intensive care unit.

Philip Bamford, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist and the trust's medical director for women and children's services, said:

"By modernising the way we provide our services we can overcome these problems and provide patients with the safest, most sustainable and highest standards of care possible.

"What we are aiming to achieve is already being achieved at other hospitals throughout the country. We need to catch up with these modern day practices and move healthcare in Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells into the 21st century.

"By concentrating our specialist services on to one site our specialists can deliver better, safer standards and an increased range of services seeing more children locally.

"We can also attract more skilled staff and get even better at what we do. At the same time, by modernising our practices, fewer children will have to stay overnight and within five or six years, the majority of children will be cared for on a day case basis."