School nursing services are ‘in crisis’ and facing increasingly complex workloads with insufficient staffing levels, a new roundtable report has warned.
A roundtable hosted by the School and Public Health Nursing Association (SAPHNA), the Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) and the College of Medicine brought together more than 30 organisations to discuss progress made on the campaign for ‘a school nurse for every school’.
The subsequent report called for ‘urgent action’ by the new government to ‘stem the crisis in school nursing to boost the health of the next generation’.
The report included early findings from a soon-to-be-published SAPHNA survey of 278 school nurses, which saw the majority (82%) report that there are ‘not enough staff to deliver a school nurse service’.
Starkly, the survey suggested 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.
Of those surveyed, 96% said they had seen an increase in mental health issues among pupils, 86% said there had been increases in children and young people self-harming/suicidal behaviour and 72% said they had seen increases in childhood obesity.
Speaking at the roundtable, which was held in July, Dr Naveed Akhtar, a GP and council member of the Royal College of Medicine, told the meeting that he had approached his local integrated care board (ICB) to ask how school nursing was funded and was ‘shocked by what he discovered’.
‘It’s actually quite shocking because the ICB hasn’t really got involved in school nursing. They have washed their hands of it. Funding comes from the council, and we’ve become so overstretched that we have one school nurse for 30,000 children,’ he said.
The report warns of burnout among what was described as an ageing school nursing workforce, with over one third of qualified nurses aged 51 and over. Of these nurses, SAPHNA’s survey suggested 37% planned to retire within the next three years.
The data, which will be published in full this month, was shared at the roundtable, which was attended by organisations involved in public health, including local government, directors of public health, academics, nursing charities and the NHS.
During the meeting, a senior official from the Office of Health Improvement and Disparities said: ‘We are hearing clearly that the new government wants to develop the healthiest generation, and so the question is where public health nursing and school nursing specifically fits within that, and we will be discussing that back in the Department.’
This was the second meeting hosted by SAPHNA, the QNI and College of Medicine around school nursing.
Earlier this month, SAPHNA launched a petition calling for a school nurse in every school.
