Recommendation 10. We recommend that the Department of Health should take steps to ensure that its guide "Welfare of Children and Young People in Hospital", is more closely followed. The guide referred to make clear that hospitals themselves should determine the number of staff they require to look after the children in their care. It also made a number of recommendations about staffing levels. We have surveyed the current staffing arrangements in paediatric nursing and identified a need for further improvement in some places. For daytime shifts nearly 50 per cent. of hospitals meet the recommendations and among those units not yet there some 40 per cent. have plans in place for increasing the numbers of trained childrens nurses. The results of the survey will be made available shortly and a copy will be made available in the Library. There has been a considerable growth in the number of nurses entering training for paediatric nursing in recent years: up from 183 in 1988 to 819 in 1992–93 for pre-registration training and from 628 to 811 for post registration training over the five year period. Training commissions for paediatric nurses rose by 36 per cent. between 1991–92 and 1994–95 (from 879 per year to 1198) reflecting increased employer demand.