This page is a reminder for professionals about any letters that have been sent out to schools from health
June 2023 - Asthma in school
Dear Colleague,
The Blackpool School Nurse team are working with health practitioners across the Lancashire & South Cumbria Integrated System to implement the ‘Asthma Friendly School’ project and support schools to achieve the Asthma Friendly Accreditation. The programme aims to enhance effective partnership working across health, education, and local authorities to support children and young people with asthma attending primary and secondary schools. The programme utilises government policy on emergency inhalers and aims to support school staff with management of health conditions in educational settings, along with a standardised AFS resource pack. As part of the programme schools are being offered:
- Evidence based and Standardised Asthma management training sessions
- Support with school Asthma Emergency Treatment polices.
- Support with emergency kits and management plans for individual children.
- Encourages Schools to identify staff who are ‘Asthma Champions’.
- Support for children who are missing education because of their Asthma or who are not joining in with sports and other activities because of poor control.
Part of this strategy is to also encourage all community and sporting groups who support families and children to complete The Tier 1 training. We are keen to promote this training far and wide across the North West, currently we have the poorest uptake in the whole of England, the training is free and can be accessed via this link. Asthma (Children and young people) - elearning for healthcare (e-lfh.org.uk). Please can we request that this information is shared with all members of your team and encourage them to complete this free training. If you require any additional information or support, please contact the Blackpool School Nursing team via bfwh.blackpoolschoolnurses@nhs.net. Thank You for your support.
Team Leader Universal Service – School Nursing
September 2023 - Speech and Language Therapy Service
Dear Headteacher and SENCO As you will be aware that over recent months our speech and language therapy team has been working to review the way we offer services and as such made some changes to the provision we offer as a temporary measure over the summer term. We are continuing to work on improving our services. We are working with the Integrated Care System across Lancashire and South Cumbria and with Blackpool Council to move towards delivering support for speech, language and communication needs within the Balanced System® Framework. This will involve partnership working with schools and settings that will be introduced over the coming 12 months. More information about the Balanced System® is available at https://www.thebalancedsystem.org/what-is-it/ and Marie Gascoigne will be presenting at the SEND conference on 4th October.
Meanwhile, we would like to update you on the current service provision we are offering and how things will develop in the future. Key points are included below, including our contact details if you require support with a child or have any queries: • From September we will hold a single “Community Therapy” service list for all school age children. We will continue to see many children within clinic but will gradually begin to offer some school appointments again, initially for children who have complex needs or social communication needs. Over time we hope to extend the range of needs we are able to offer school based appointements for and will keep you up date on this as the service continues to develop.
• We will be continuing with the use of a dedicated email address for schools to contact us if you require support or wish to discuss a specific childs needs. This will insure that all schools in Blackpool, Wyre and Fylde have a single point of contact for speech and lanauge therapy support. The address to contact us on is: bfwh.salt.schoolphoneadvice@nhs.net Please remember to provide the following information in the email:
- Child’s name and date of birth
- Telephone number and email address for the therapist to respond to
- Reason for discussion request
We are introducing a range of new workshops and training which will be available to parents and school later in 2023. We will be running information sessions in October for schools to attend to discuss the NHS SLT changes. We are updating our website and referral form and will share these with you in the near future.
We will be in touch over the next few weeks and months to share more information and to invite you to meet with us to learn more about how our service is developing.
Kind regards from, The Speech and Language Therapy Team