Assignment 2
REASEARCH ESSAY

BY JADE DUNGATE

My essay is going to be based on nursing within schools. I'm going to discuss the financial and nursing funds and cuts and proposed changes and argue as to whether these factors will affect the nurses ability to provide a proper service to schools and pupils.

Firstly I am going to discuss the background history of school nursing. In the begining school nurses where employed to check hygiene and general cleanliness of the pupils i.e headlice and skin infections. This was because alot of children came from poor struggling working class families. In the 1890's they would do treatment for minor injuries and eye infections. In 1907 they progressed to medical inspections and measures to prevent the spread of disease and sanctioned conditions, this led to nurses being able to provide more treatment to the children. there were two main reasons for this. The first being to provide knowledge to the children parents and teachers, the second to see if children were fit and healthy to take part in chool class and activities. Also to prevent the spread of disease.

So, who is a school nurse? what role do they play in a school environment? a school nurse is someone who would normally be in charge of approximately 7 schools at the most, with approximately 2,500 pupils in total,making their job very hard and challenging due to the amount of work and responsibility, also lack of resources to do the job as well as they should compared to independant schools wo have larger budgets and capital to invest in resources.

All nurses have to be CRB checked. Their role is to make sure the children in school health need are met and that they are Fairley healthy in themselves. A nurse will check children's hearing to see if there are problems, referring them to a doctor if is needed, checking their height and also checking their vision and again referring the child to a doctor again still if needed. They do oral health hygiene, oral health. They assist with PSHE lessons, about the sexual health and also assembly with in schools talking about a number of different health issues, on whole year groups. Schools nurses also provide training for teachers, for anything that they might need the training to use something medical.

In most schools There Is a national child measurement program for reception and years 6 children. Which with this they would do their height, there BMI and they have follow ups if they are needed. There are also medical plans for a child that has medical needs which children may not be able to attend if they arent in school regularly as they may not be well enough to do this or they might have a lot of medication which is needed to be taken on a regular basis, which the nurses are able to administrate to the child. Nurses also will work on and do child protection services for the vulnerable, they will also liaise with the social services and they deal with the child protection plans which are needed with certain children.
A school nurse is the not always the person whom provides first aid as there is a person whom is designated within the school who could be simply a teacher or helper. Many of us think a school nurse is someone who looks after a pupil if they have a tummy ache or headache; however there is a lot more to a school nurses job than this. A lot of children and parents do not know what services that school nurses provide as they are not told of educated about these services.

The demand from schools now are very high. Nurses have heavy caseloads and not enough of nurses to help deal with the work load. At the moment there is a huge demand for the NHS to employ more school nurses. This has recently been brought up in the news as there is also now a new policy. This policy is giving schools the right and permission to give out contraceptives in both primary and secondary schools.

This is an issue I really don’t agree with. Not only are they putting a huge strain on resources but they are also encouraging sex to under age kids. there is a huge amount of arguments for and against this. they are also referring girls for secret abortions at the clinic without parents consent or aknowledgement. A quotation from an article Read ‘It doesn't matter; you can get the morning-after pill.’ I do believe these new strains on services are both immoral and a huge pull on already lacking resources. I imagine we will see the abortion age going down and down.”
Sue Axon says who lost the appeal to make it illegal for this to happen for girls in primary schools, as this could more pressure on young girls to have sex with boys as they know if there was anything to go wrong there are services in place where the young girl could get the abortion pill/abortion.

So are there enough school nurses? And are cuts and funding really taking place? There are school nurses still very much present in primary schools within the London boroughs. In the London borough of Hammersmith I spoke to a nurse who informed me that there where no cuts being made, as a matter of fact they were expanding their sector and actually bringing more nurse in as there are not enough nurses and resources readily available. As 1 nurse is allocated to 3 schools and could be in 2 days a week or sometimes maybe more, but they are not in the school every day. So funding in this particular borough seems to be on the increase.

So what problems are these nurses faced with? although No direct funding as such is being cut, there is a decrease of funding of external services, this is making it hard to make referrals and it also making it equally hard as they do not have enough resources to the job to the ability that they are capable. Some of the problems that they are faced with are that the schools are not flexible enough for the nurses. There is not enough rooms or space allocated for nurses so that they can see to the child when needed and work. Their are also a lot of rules and regulationsas to what a nurse can and cant advise and assist with when it come to children.

In Newham school nurses are faced with the same problems, lack of staff and funding. They are very short staffed for nurses within primary schools, so they needed to bring more in so that they can deal with the demand from the schools. their funding is being cut, "for the global health." There is a big lack of resources that are not seen as much as they needed to be. A lot of people do not understand the role of a nurse, which means they do not understand or comprehend the amount of funding that is needed to do the job to the ability that is needed. What is included in the job role is again child protection plans for children that needed, immunisations, care plans for children with high medical needs, eppi pen training for school staff so that they are to use this when in a emergency. They also do PSHE lessons, they do health assessments and health appointments and health screenings. They do height weight and audio vision for the children.
The problem that they face is that they have a lack of resources to their job and a large lack of administration support to help them.

In conclusion i believe school nurses are still very much needed and an important part of achool and childrens health and welfare. For school nursing to be sucessful the government need to invest in more nurses and resources. Case loads at present are high and the pressure the nurses have to face puts a strain on what they can achieve. The impact they have on childrens welfare is huge and fundimental, it cuts were made it could have drastic effects. They are fundimentally there to support a child through youth and adolesence.
In responce to my starting question i believe if nursing cuts were to take place it would stop nurses being able to provide a sucessful service to pupils and teachers. My way to solve these problems would be to invest in more nurses and training and designate one or more school nurses to each school.