Published: 30 October 2006
One and a Half Seconds per Child
Health chiefs in Cornwall are going to be asked about school nurse workloads, after a school nurse revealed that she looked after 9,000 school-age children in the county.
(Based on a 37.5 hour week this works out at an average of 1.5 seconds per child per week, or just over 1 minute per child per year).
Amicus is writing to the new Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Primary Care Trust (PCT) after the nurse told Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt of her enormous workload at the recent Amicus/Community Practitioners’ and Health Visitors’ Association annual conference.
Ms Hewitt described the situation as ‘horrific’, after delegates heard that the nurse had a 9,000-strong case load, covering 28 schools and a further education college.
She had up to 25 children on the child protection register at any one time and 25 ‘looked after’ children.
Amicus Head of Health, Kevin Coyne said:
“This is disgraceful.
If this nurse’s workload is mirrored across the school nurses in Cornwall, we are looking at a potential crisis situation, where the public health remit of school nurses is not being fulfilled.
The government has put the campaign to prevent teenage pregnancy, tackling alcohol and drug abuse, and giving advice on mental health problems and obesity at the top of its agenda for the health of young people.
We will be asking for urgent talks with the PCT to ask them how this situation has arisen and what remedial action they will be taking in the near future”.
Amicus/CPHVA has repeatedly called for the employment of a full-time school nurse for every one of the UK’s 3,400 secondary schools and their cluster of primary schools – in line with government policy.
However, then health minister, Liam Byrne told the Commons in February, 2006 that there were only 2,409 nurses employed in schools at the end of September 2004, of which 856 were qualified school nurses.
Kevin Coyne continued:
“These figures demonstrate the glaring abyss between the rhetoric and reality on the ground – in this respect, Cornwall is no different from many other parts of the UK”.
Further information
Amicus/CPHVA
Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Primary Care Trust (PCT)
Teachernet – School Nurses
RCN Census Survey of School Nurses
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