A new bill to promote children’s wellbeing and better protect and identify vulnerable school pupils has been described as ‘very welcome’ by England’s leading school nurse association.
The School and Public Health Nurses Association (SAPHNA) said the changes proposed in the bill are ‘definitely needed’ given the rise in safeguarding responsibilities taken on by school nurses.
If passed, the bill will introduce new registers to identify children who are not in school, alongside a new ‘identifier number’ for children across services, working like the national insurance (NI) number does for adults.
The bill aims to provide better protections against abuse and prevent vulnerable children from ‘falling through the cracks.’
The bill had its first reading in Parliament on 17 December , with the second reading scheduled for 8 January 2025.
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It would also see school nurses continue to play a role in multidisciplinary child protection teams, working with local authorities to identify a child’s needs and monitor children who are subject to child protection plans.
Sallyann Sutton, professional officer at the School and Public Health Nurses Association (SAPHNA), said she ‘absolutely welcomes’ the bill and that school nurses have long called for a register for children who do not attend school or are home educated.
‘If school nurses think about their role in safeguarding, it is a critical part of their public health role, because a school nurse will safeguard a child by being part of a system that supports that child to develop and grow up and be healthy and happy,’ Ms Sutton told Nursing in Practice.
She added that school nurses have a key role to play in child safeguarding proceedings.
‘I think school nurses have a key role in that process, to check out the suitability of home education, certainly school nurses have a role where they know the families and can offer their special view,’ she said.
While welcoming the bill, Ms Sutton warned that the safeguarding role of school nurses is often misunderstood.
She said: ‘The frustration is that there needs to be a better understanding of the school nursing role in terms of understanding that their time is most effectively and efficiently spent in prevention promotion, not sitting in a child protection conference with a child they don’t know and haven’t had any information on.’
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She stressed that school nurses should focus on health promotion and early sickness intervention, rather than ‘the crisis end of things’.
Parents will also no longer have an automatic right to educate their child at home if their child is subject to a child protection investigation or under a child protection plan.
If a child’s home environment is judged to be ‘unsuitable or unsafe’, local authorities will have the power to intervene and require school attendance for any child.
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson described the bill as a ‘seminal moment for child protection,’ and that it would help to ‘join up’ children’s social care, schools and local services’.
‘This bill will be a seminal moment for child protection. No more words, no more lessons learnt. This government will put children first at every turn,’ she said.
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A separate SAPHNA survey, also from October, found that the average school nurse now cares for an average of 2,850 pupils, with those in post now spending ‘most of their time’ supporting children on child protection plans, with insufficient time to focus on health promotion.
