The government is preparing guidance clarifying the “roles and responsibilities” of school staff when it comes to medical care for vulnerable pupils, after Schools Week revealed the “accident waiting to happen” across England.
Catherine McKinnell, the schools minister, was pressed about the delegation of medical support to unregulated school staff during an education committee hearing this morning.
Schools Week revealed last month how the dwindling number of nurses in schools means junior staff are forced to undertake complex medical procedures on vulnerable pupils.
The situation is so bad that one prominent special school trust may be forced to take legal action against its local health board.
At the committee hearing today, chair Helen Hayes told the minister that the SEND code of practice and the Department for Education’s guidance on supporting pupils with medical conditions “doesn’t address the question of the delegation of medical support to unregulated school staff”.
“And we know this is a situation that leaves potentially, both pupils and staff extremely exposed, because there are unqualified staff delivering medical support in school settings. And that is a situation that is unacceptable.”
She asked what work the government was doing to “make sure that there’s clear guidance, but also to make sure that the financial responsibility for delivering medical support in education settings is borne by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)”, rather than “eating into” already-stretched high needs funding.
Guidance coming in the autumn
McKinnell said the government appreciated “the appetite for updated guidance on the delegation of clinical tasks by healthcare professionals to school and college staff.
“So I am pleased to confirm that officials and DHSC and NHS England colleagues are developing non-statutory guidance to clarify the roles and responsibilities. We plan to publish this as soon as possible in the autumn.”
NHS data for England shows the number of full-time equivalent school nurses has fallen from 3,000 in 2010 to around 2,000 now.
The National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) annual conference in May debated a motion highlighting the problem.
Proposed by Marijke Miles of the NAHT’s practice committee, the motion warned that Department for Education guidance is being misinterpreted and used to pressure schools into providing medical care.
According to Miles: “Clinicians up and down the land are quoting it as a requirement for schools to undertake clinical procedures, including ones that are quite invasive, when that is not what the guidance actually says.”
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