New Year, New Opportunities?

Welcome to our latest newsletter

We’re a month into 2026 and we are focusing on finishing off work we’ve started this year, and planning what we’re going to deliver in 2026-27. As always, we’re working collaboratively with all those involved in renal care, communicating how and why there’s more we can do to improve services for renal patients, and providing challenge when we see inequity or areas where quality could be improved. If you’d like to get more involved in the Network, we love you to join us. There are several opportunities that we’re highlighting this newsletter.

LKN Clinical Director and LKN Nurse Lead vacancies

Both Clinical Director and Nurse Lead posts are now open for expressions of interest. If you are passionate about improving the lives of people with kidney disease and have significant experience of leadership and engagement across the renal pathway, ideally with regional and national experience, we’d love to hear from you. The roles are both 0.1WTE/1PA per week.

You can find out more about both roles here https://londonkidneynetwork.nhs.uk/vacancies/

To discuss more fully, contact Stephen (stephen.cass3@nhs.net)

Psycho-social Support for renal patients; how confident are you?

Kidney Care UK published ‘Left To Get On With It’ in June 2025. It showed that renal patients often feel psychologically and emotionally unsupported by renal teams. It can be difficult to ask questions about people’s well-being if you feel unclear how to respond to their concerns, or that there’s nowhere you can sign-post them for help. If this is something you’d like to feel more confident about in your daily practice, the National Psychosocial Working Group launched their online training last month. The whole course takes around 2 hours to complete but is broken down into 20-25 minutes modules. It covers a wide variety of topics, from psychological stressors in renal disease, to strategies to help you support psycho-social problems, and considering how supporting others impacts your own mental health.

You can access this free training here: Psychosocial Training for Kidney Care

You can access ‘Left to Get On With It’ here: Left to get on with it: The real impact of inadequate psychosocial support in kidney care | Kidney Care UK

LKN Update

Last newsletter we reported what we’ve been working on with you for the first three quarters of the year. So what can you expect to see in the last quarter?

CRM (Cardiorenal metabolic Prevention):

  1. Supporting ICSs to include and use CKD data in their ICS reporting to help monitor progress and identify areas for improvement.  
  2. Agreement with Cardiovascular and Diabetes Networks on support and consulting on the draft pan-London CRM Education Framework. 
  3. Delivery of first CKD webinar for 2026, as part of the education programme for people living with CKD 1-3 living in London or Surrey Heartlands. 
  4. Finalisation of ‘Caring for your kidneys’ animated patient information resource, co-created with the Welsh Kidney Network. 

AKC (Advanced Kidney Care)

  1. Completion of the LKN AKC Pathway.
  2. Review of AKC metrics in the LKN Data Dashboard and Report.
  3.  A draft plan for an AKC Health Equities Project.
  4. Engagement with renal units to explore co-developing a pan-London AKC education programme for staff. 

Dialysis:

  1. A drafted set of service standards for home haemo-dialysis (HHD), including baseline expectations for workforce, training access, machines, home modification timelines, data and service delivery equity
  2. Production of standard clinical supporting letter templates for re-housing referrals, aiming to provide consistent, high quality information to improve changes of re- housing to enable people to be able to dialyse at home.
  3. Confirmation of a Dialysis at Home event to be delivered in early 2026-27
  4. GRIP33 (Growing Incident Peritoneal Dialysis to 33%​), a home dialysis calculator to guide operational planning, piloted in one renal unit 
  5. Re-issued and updated Utility Costs Reimbursement guidelines

Transplant:

1. Community Engagement Working Group, aiming to increase pre-emptive living donation, will be re-started
2. LKN response to BTS Cardiovascular assessment guidelines submitted
3. Current use of ABOi transplants in London scoped
4. Agreement of how the LKN transplant and Rehabilitation groups can support weight- loss management to facilitate transplant listing opportunities
5. Agreement of which additional data items are necessary to support service improvement and monitoring, alongside a clear plan for how to report mutual aid outcomes pan-London

Supportive Care:

1. Agreement on format and content of education half days, with a planned start date set
2. Clarity on which 3Ps funded frailty and/or supportive care projects have ongoing funding with a plan for how we can support those where this isn’t agreed
3. Agreement with LKN Clinical Information Group members to begin reporting new Supportive Care metrics from Q1 2026-27 data submission request
4. Timeframe for delivery of patient survey on supportive care

Psycho-social and Rehabilitation:

1. Agreement of initial work of recently formed psycho-social group, which will include patient assessment tools, delivery of a pathway for support for each unit, and supporting uptake of national psycho-social training
2. Completion of the symptom management pathways co-developed with the AKC Group
3. Inclusion of multi-professional team members in all LKN workstreams

Data:

1. Re-forecasted in-centre dialysis growth numbers signed-off by each Unit
2. Agreed Kidney DOM v0.2 development criteria

Demand and Capacity:

1. Agreed purpose, scope and governance for London Demand and Capacity Management Group
2. Agreement through the new LKN -Chaired National Demand and Capacity Management Group on national governance, ambition and workplan for demand and capacity
3. Use of the LKN GRIP33 tool to model 10 Year targets for incident home therapies for all London units
4. Piloted use of the Midlands Kidney Network KSCOPE tool to support ICHD growth trajectory work

If you’d like to be part of any of this work and you’d like to help lead and implement change across London, please get in touch with the relevant project manager
CRM and AKC – Linda linda.tarm2@nhs.net
Transplant, Supportive Care, Psycho-social and rehabilitation, and Demand and Capacity – Nic nicola.cunningham14@nhs.net
Dialysis- Mariza mariza.procopio@nhs.net
Data- Peter peter.wilson11@nhs.net

Did You Know?

The UKKA and renal charities are developing a kidney strategy that intends to support prevention, earlier intervention and high-quality, person-centred care. You can read more about this campaign here: 7 million lives at risk

You can join one of a series of listening events to gather your ideas on a kidney disease strategy for the future.

Save the dates and register your interest here: Form

  • Virtual launch event – setting out the vision, the process and why this matters
    4 February | 12:00 – 14:00
  • In-person listening events
    Birmingham – 26 February
    Leeds – 25 March
    Bristol – 29 April
  • Virtual listening events
    Northern Ireland and Scotland – 20 April | 12:00 – 14.00
    London and East of England – 23 March | 12:00 – 14.00

Training opportunities

On Tuesday 3rd March 1-2:30pm, the Universal Care Plan team are holding a virtual learn and share event focused on the UCP and Palliative and End of Life Care (PEoLC). There will be information on how the UCP supports PEoLC and the future direction of the UCP programme. It will provide an opportunity to share feedback on the use of the UCP and discuss what is working well, as well as any challenges.

It isn’t a training session on what the UCP is or how to use it but an interactive engagement session with the opportunity to share feedback and ask questions.

You can find out more and register here The session is open any professional supporting the PEoLC population in London