Schools and Education Settings

Do you know what the School Nursing service offers?

The service works in schools and across the wider community with partners from health, education, social care and voluntary sector organisations. The service is represented on a range of partnership work including the Emotional Health and Wellbeing Strategy Groups and Early Help Strategy Groups. The service is commissioned by Public Health in the Local Authority and the service leads on the delivery of the Healthy Child Programme, taking over from the Health Visiting service. School Nurses work with individual children and young people and also with the wider community taking a public health approach to addressing a wider range of health and wellbeing issues.

Schools, do you know who your named School Nurse is?

We operate a locality team model and every school has access to team of named specialist community public health nurses (SCPHN’s). SCPHN’s are qualified School Nurses who are supported by staff nurses and nursery nurses. The team will be the link between the school and the service They will provide the support for the school including delivery of PSHE, assemblies, parent information sessions and other interventions. The list of schools and their named nurses can be accessed via this link Named School Nurse (Locality Model) List 20-21 Dec 20.

The services offers a visit to the school in the autumn term to meet with a member of staff who the Head Teacher has designated as a link person. This is usually a SENCo, pastoral lead or deputy head teacher. At this meeting the School Nurse provides an update about the core offer to schools and will start to plan what support each school might wish to access during the school year.

How to Refer a Pupil to the Service

Referring Children & Young People to the School Nursing Service

The service offers an open access referral service which means that parents can contact the service and request that their child sees a school nurse or any health or non-health professional can make a referral on a parents behalf.

If you are a professional and would like to make a referral then please complete our Referral Form for School Nursing Services (March 21). Please send complete forms to our secure email address at schoolnursingadmin@nhs.net. If you are not sending from a non secure email then you will need to password protect the referral form and provide us with the password in a separate email. Please send the referral form in the original word format and do not PDF.

All referrals must be discussed with the child, young person and parent/carer in advance to gain consent to make the referral.

Providing a school report

It is essential that we have as much information about the child at the point of referral. This helps us to decide what might be the best intervention and support to offer to the child and family. The information about the child’s academic ability, social and emotional, behaviour, strengths and SEND needs is key to our assessment. Therefore when a makes a referral we require the staff member who knows the child best to complete the school report section of the referral form.

When another professional or the parent/carers makes a referral to our service then we will often approach the school for further information. We will only do this when the parent/carers has give us consent to do so. We will then send a request for a school report to the child’s teacher.

Our Referral Criteria

We support children and young people from the age that they start in full-time school until their 19th birthday or the age of 25 years if the young person has special educational or additional health need. This document provides further information about when and how to refer to the School Nursing Service: Guide for professionals -School Nurse Referral Criteria & Process- Sept 2021-22

Access to workshops and groups

We offer a stepped care pathway approach to children, young people and parents. This means that we aim to offer the right intervention for that child or young person, starting with the self-help and information giving and when needed progressing to group interventions and individual assessment and support. All of the support we offer can be accessed directly by the parent/carer or when appropriate a young person. Therefore, a professional does not need to complete a referral form.

The service offers a range of workshops for parents and groups for children, young people and parents.

Workshops

Understanding your child’s emotions
Understanding your child’s behaviour
Talking to your child about puberty and growing up
Supporting children who wet the bed
Managing common toileting problems
Toilet training your child

Groups

Anger Management (7-11 years )
Fun FRIENDS (4-7 years)
Primary FRIENDS (7-11 years)
Teen FRIENDS (11-16 years)
Adult Resilience (parents/carers and young people aged 17 years+)
Parenting Groups (parents/carers)

Parents and carers can book on these groups directly by emailing wellbeing@walsallhealthcare.nhs.uk and telephoning 01922 423349.

What happens once we receive a referral?

Once we receive your referral it will be reviewed by a member of the team at our weekly referral meeting. A decision might be made to offer a parent/carers the option of attending one of our workshops. Or the parent/carer or their child might be offered the option of accessing a group intervention. If we consider that more support is required then a health assessment might be offered.

Whichever option is offered, the parent/carers will be sent a letter requesting them to contact our service to book onto a workshop or group or make an appointment for their child to see a nurse for a health assessment. The parent/carer will be sent a copy of our School Nursing Parent Information Leaflet Sept 21. If the parent/carer fails to contact our service (opt in) they will be discharged unless a school nurse makes an assessment that there is a risk to the child. If we do identify any risks then we will contact the person making the original referral to discuss our concerns and agree the best way forward. If we make a decision to discharge the child because the parent/carer has not taken up our service then we will notify the professional who made the original referral.

If a professional has made a referral then they will keep them up to date with the progress of the referral, what support has been offered and if a child has not be bought to an intervention or the parent/carer did not ‘opt in’ to our service.

Health Education in Schools and Education Settings

The School Nursing service support schools to deliver high-quality health education in the curriculum. We provide a range of training for school staff and pupil lessons.

Pupil Lessons

We offer a range of pupil lessons. Some are included free of charge as part of core offer and some can be purchased as part of School Nursing Traded Services Offer

Transition

The transition lessons are part of the core offer and free of charge. We have a lesson for pupils in primary school (Year 6) who are ready to make the transition to secondary schools. For, secondary schools we can attend your transition days when year 6 pupil visit the secondary school that they have be offered a place at. We can offer a ‘drop in’ type session or provide an ‘assembly’. You can discuss your requirements with your named School Nurse. The focus of our lessons for pupils are health and well-being to encourage pupils to start to take more responsibility as they grow up. We will tell pupils about how to access the School Nursing service using our ChatHealth text service and how to access information on our Health for Kids and Health for Teens

We prefer to come into school and meet with pupils so that they can become more familiar with their named school nurse and starts to feel more confident in accessing the service However, we do have lesson ‘getting ready to move to secondary school’ recorded as a webinar.

Pupils in Year 6 and 7 can also find out more about the School Nursing Service by watching our Getting to know your School Nurse webinar

Puberty and Growing Up

We can deliver RSE pupil lessons in your school as part of our traded services offer. Alternatively lessons can be accessed in a webinar format. We have separate lessons for boys and girls

A Girl’s Guide to Puberty and Growing Up

A Boy’s Guide to Puberty and Growing Up

Emotional Health and Wellbeing

We have a lesson for year 6 pupils and above which is focused on improving resilience in young people. This is based on a Think, Time, Talk resource which has been developed by one of the School Nurses as part of Public Health Nursing degree. This can be used as a universal promotion of emotional wellbeing resource with the whole class or as a targeted resource for young people who have low level problems with self esteem, confidence and worry.

Think, Time, Talk Wellbeing lesson

We can deliver the pupil lesson for wellbeing as part of your free spring term offer. Alternatively lessons can be accessed in a webinar format.

Staff Training

The School Nursing service support staff to deliver high quality health education in schools. We deliver training throughout the year at a central venue (or online). This training is free of charge to Walsall schools.

Delivering Relationship and Sex Education in Schools

The training is based on our RSE Toolkit for schools. We offer sessions for primary schools and for secondary schools. The training will provide you with tips and strategies to help you deliver lessons in schools and showcase the Walsall resources that available to you. The toolkit has been developed with Brook to guide you through our films and to help with the delivery of relationships and sexual health education for Key Stages 2, 3 and 4 pupils. This toolkit is free to access for Walsall schools via the EasySRE website . To access the resources you will need to create a log in for your school.

Delivering Mental Health Awareness in the Curriculum

We offer training for primary schools and for secondary schools. The training will provide you with tips and strategies to help you deliver lessons in schools and showcase the Walsall resources that available to you. Some of the resources that are available free of charge can be accessed from the EasySRE website. To access the resources you will need to create a log in for your school.

Information for parents/carers

It is important that parents/carers have access to the information that is shared with their children during lessons in schools. They are then better placed to talk to their child about what they have learnt and help them to use their learning outside of school. We offer parent workshops and information sessions on transition and puberty and growing up. These sessions can be delivered in schools to your parents free of charge as part of our core offer. Parents can also access information in webinar format via the parent/carers section of our Health for Kids website.

Moving On. Supporting children through school transition webinar for parents/carers

Talking To Your Child About Growing Up & Puberty

Think, Time, Talk – Supporting your teenager’s emotional health and wellbeing