Maintain pressure on reforms to protect NHSEd Balls to visit school nurses
Children, schools and families secretary Ed Balls has pledged to visit frontline school nurses to get a firsthand idea of their work pressures.
Mr Balls was attending the Unite/Community Practitioners’ and Health Visitors’ Association annual conference in Southport on Wednesday.
He heard that in the North East some school nurses had cases of more than 6,000 children each. As a result, Mr Balls promised delegates that he would visit the area.
Unite national officer for health Karen Reay said: “We warmly welcome Ed Balls’ clear commitment to school nursing and his desire to take up Unite’s invitation to visit school nurses in the North East to see what they do during their busy working day.”
According to NHS statistics, another 2,000 school nurses need to be employed in England by 2010 to achieve the government’s goal of one specialist school nurse for every secondary school.
The latest NHS workforce statistics, based on September 2008 figures, revealed that there were 1,062 full-time equivalent school nurses in England – an increase of 169 on the previous year.
Have your say
You must sign in to make a comment.
Online training units, written and reviewed by experts. Earn two hours' CPD and a personalised certificate for your portfolio.
Subscribers get five FREE learning units and non-subscribers can access each learning unit for £10 + VAT.
Share
Readers' comments (2)
Anonymous | 22-Oct-2009 7:20 pm
What a waste of time and money, it has been known for years that there is a dire shortage of school nurses, do we really need money (that could go toward employing more school nurses) spent on this. The information and research on this subject has been available for a number of years. Stop procrastinating and train and employ more school nurses.
Unsuitable or offensive?
Anonymous | 23-Oct-2009 7:45 pm
I think this is marvellous. We need ministers to visit frontline staff and see what the issues are for staff in frontline delivery, and also what expertise there is in the workplace. Go for it school nurses and hopefully get some long awaited recognition for the hard work, skill and dedication in supporting children and families. I think the previous comment is sour grapes! meiow! I doubt whether the finance from one trip from Ed Balls would employ many school nurses.
Unsuitable or offensive?