Agenda item

Juliette Penney, Clinical Services Manager, Children and Young Peoples Services/Rotherham Foundation Trust, to present

Tracey McErlain-Burns, Chief Nurse, presented an overview of the Special Schools Nursing Service in Rotherham which provided holistic nursing care for children and young people with additional health needs enabling them to access education.

The report highlighted:-

-     Composition of the Team – 3.5 staff - mixture of children’s trained and learning disability trained nurses (Bands 6 and 5)

-     Schools currently serviced by the Team  – Abbey, Hilltop, Kelford, Milton, Newman and Willows as well as schools where there were children who had additional health needs requiring care plans (50 active cases)

-     Role of the School Nurse – assess the student’s health status, identify health problems that may create a barrier to educational progress and develop a health care plan for management of the problems in the school setting.  The School Nurse would also ensure that the child’s individual health care plan was developed and implemented with the participation of School and the main carers to ensure the child’s needs were met

-     The Team also provided services that mainstream School Nursing carried out including immunisations, drop-in clinics, health assessments and assessment of growth

-     Training delivered – monthly Epipen training for new staff as well as annual updates, Gastrostomy, Suction, Tracheostomy care, Adrenal insufficiency and Medication training

-     Safeguarding – Team members must ensure they maintained their skills in managing Safeguarding cases and required to ensure their training was up-to-date.  Individual supervision was given by a Specialist Nurse from the Safeguarding Team to support practitioners.  If a child was identified as being sexually exploited, the Rotherham Foundation Trust’s Safeguarding procedures would be followed as well as making contact with the children’s advocate and appropriate agencies.

-     Future – with the advent of Education and Health Care Plans the Team would be well placed to contribute and become involved with the formation of Rotherham’s plans

Discussion ensued on the report with the following issues raised/clarified:-

·      Discussions would take place with the Team Leaders to gain an understanding of their workloads particularly how the Teams were structured so there was confidence that the School Nurse caseloads were never disproportionate without good reason

·      Work was currently taking place with the MASH.  School Nurses were often needed to attend a large number of strategy meetings and sufficient flexibility had to be built into their day to enable them to respond quickly.  Their input was important because of the information and intelligence they held about the welfare of the children

·      The Service was currently commissioned by Public Health.  Work was taking place on a refresh of the School Nurse specification including the needs analysis and discussions with CYPS in the longer term to develop a service for 0-19/24 year olds dependent upon the particular needs of the child/young person and reflecting either health needs or learning difficulties to the age of 24 years.  Improvements were needed on performance information for the new specification.

·      The Health Visiting Service, currently commissioned by NHS England, would transfer to the Council on 1^st October with the Health Visiting and Family Health Programme

·      Work was taking place with the Foundation Years’ Service (0-5 years) - School Nursing provided a service from 5-19 years – regarding an Integrated Early Years Best Start Programme and with the Trust on the pathways that would support the joint assessment of children from 0-5 years.  Children’s Centres would be at the heart of the programme being the first point of call for families but also where Services could go to contact the families

·      School Nursing and Health Visiting Services had their own recruitment difficulties.  The refreshed specification needed to be clear what service was being commissioned and what the requirements were of Community Nurses

·      Integration of School Nurses into mainstream services to address CSE, bullying and self-harm.

·      Recognition that there was insufficient acknowledgement of the views of young people with respect to their care plans

·      In partnership with the Learning Disabilities Partnership across Rotherham the Trust had successfully recruited a Learning Disabilities Lead Nurse and a new Dementia Lead Nurse who also had a Learning Disabilities background

Tracey undertook to provide information regarding ongoing support for young people when they leave education.

Tracey and Joanna were thanked for covering this agenda item.

Resolved:-  That the report and the Services provided for children and young people with specific health needs be noted.