Specialist School Nurse

Role Responsibility: To be a member of the special school multi-agency team and share information with team members as directed and appropriate, maintaining confidentiality at all times. To work towards helping children and young people with a variety of special needs to obtain optimum health and gain access to a wide education curriculum. To act as a resource and point of contact representing the Special School Nursing services to internal and external agencies. To maintain accurate school records through accessing the electronic health notes system (currently Rio), filing and organisation in accordance with Whittington Health NHS Trust guidelines. To use a variety of verbal and non-verbal communication skills and tools to communicate with children and young people who are nonverbal, of a non-English speaking background, requiring an interpreter, with a hearing impairment, with altered emotional states, with a cognitive/learning/behavioural disability. Clinical Responsibility: To assess the health needs of children and young people entering special schools in consultation with health visitors, school nurse colleagues and other health professionals as appropriate. To participate and contribute to agreed health surveillance programmes in special schools including annual health reviews, assessing overall developmental progress and health needs. To assist the wider special school nursing team in covering support in times of short staffing to children and young people with complex learning and physical needs. To maintain up to date accurate health records for all school children and young people and ensure recommendations regarding referrals; treatment and/or review are carried out. To produce written statement of nursing need and care plans as required. To work in partnership with other agencies to identify children and young people in need and children and young people on child protection plans, liaising with school staff and social workers. To monitor the vulnerable children and young people with child protection issues, attend child protection case conferences, reviews, and core group meetings; and provide written reports. To be responsible for report writing and effective record keeping, facilitating best practice. To prepare and attend meetings for child protection supervision with safeguarding advisors. To liaise with the Disabled Childrens Team concerning the care and support for pupils and their parents, carers and families. To monitor the health and wellbeing of Looked After Children on the school caseload and liaise with Looked After Children nurses assisting with annual reviews when needed. To arrange appointments with pupils parents/carers for school medicals, dietician, and professionals meetings. To complete relevant continence assessments and support pupils, parents, carers, families and school staff with toilet training and continence. To be involved in training and competency assessing health care assistants in procedures relevant to their role such as medication administration, administering enteral feeds, height and weight measurements, and updating these annually. To provide training and support to parents, carers and school staff on a variety of topics around management of children and young people with special needs and be involved with assessing and recording school staff competencies. To undertake height and weight monitoring to identify and refer any concerns arising from growth screening. To co ordinate the planning and implementation of immunisation sessions within the school setting in consultation with the immunisation team. To act in an advisory capacity to trained school first aiders in the event of a more serious injury to a child e.g., broken bone, severe asthma attack, seizure management etc. To attend relevant team and service meetings. To ensure all nursing equipment is clean, safe to use, and in good repair and that annual maintenance and calibration is carried out and recorded, and records are kept and available for inspection. To complete risk assessments of environment and safety under the guidance of senior team members following Whittington Health NHS Trust policies.