TREATMENT given to children in the county's hospitals is fair', a report by the health watchdog has found.

The Healthcare Commission's review assessed progress in a number of elements from the hospital standard of the National Service Framework for Children and Young People (NSF), launched by the Government in 2003.

The standard was created to ensure that children are cared for in hospital settings, and by appropriately trained staff, that adequately reflect their needs.

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust - which runs Worcestershire Royal Hospital, the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch and Kidderminster Hospital - scored fair overall.

This means a performance that, overall, meets minimum requirements and the reasonable expectations of patients and the public, but with a number of areas for improvement.

It was marked fair on its emergency care, day case care, in-patient care and emergency surgery provided to children. It was given a score of weak for the outpatient services it provides, but good for elective surgery.

A spokesman for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said: "We are pleased that so much of the report reflects positively on the work we have done to deliver high quality services for our younger patients.

"We have made further good progress recently, in particular in the area of anaesthetics, where a higher number of children are looked after by consultant anaesthetists with an interest in paediatric anaesthesia than in many comparable trusts.

"While our dedicated paediatric clinics provide a child-friendly out-patient service, we are aware that other children have to attend out-patient appointments in speciality clinics where most of the patients are adults. One of our priorities is to ensure that greater efforts are made to cater for these children's needs in future."

He said that the HCC summary report is based on data for the period October 2004- September 2005.

"We have greatly improved child protection training and paediatric resuscitation since then," he said.