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 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 services offers a visit to the school in the autumn term. At this meeting the School Nurse provides an update and will start to plan what support each school might wish to access during the school year.
Information for schools poster
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. 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 making 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 given 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.
What happens once we receive a referral?
Once we receive your referral it will be reviewed by a member of the team. The parent/carers will be contacted to discuss the referral and the professional will be kept informed.
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.
Transition
The transition sessions are part of the core offer and include 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.
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
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.