UNISON has recently published a report (Hard Lessons) which contains feedback from members working in schools. Key concerns raised are the lack of training and consistent clear policies round the range of complex health and personal care tasks that are required to support children and young people in the educations system. UNISON therefore welcomes the publication of and looks forward to implementing clear guidance in this area. UNISON in particular welcomes the statement in the guidance that it will apply to early learning and childcare settings as well as schools.
UNISON is concerned that throughout the draft guidance references are made to the responsibilities of and the obligation to work with both “school health teams” and the child or young persons’ “named person”. These policies have not yet been fully implemented and therefore we have concerns about how this guidance can be effectively implemented before these teams/individuals are fully operational. This will again have implications for the effectiveness of the sections of the guidance round access to individual child’s records and co-ordination with the named person. It appears that decisions on the implementation of the named person scheme particularity round sharing of information will not be made for some time. Guidance must include detail of what should happen until these programmes are fully operational.
UNISON welcomes the general principles laid out in the guidance particularly the clear statement that school staff providing healthcare should receive appropriate training from a health professional or an accredited source. UNISON believes that same principle should apply to the provision of intimate care which also requires appropriate training.This response details where we believe the guidance needs to be more specific. This is mainly round clear lines of responsibility and accountability, appropriate training and insurance/indemnity for staff undertaking these tasks.
UNISON looks forward to working to implement the guidance when the consultation process is complete.