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School Nurse

October 4th 2005

Clare Roberts

School Nurse

Clare has had over ten years experience of working with children. As a Registered Nurse, previously known as an RSCN, she has worked in a variety of settings and has enjoyed continuing her professional development.

Clare worked as a team leader with young children who had profound learning disabilities. She learned to communicate using the sign language, Makaton and using Bliss symbols. These different methods of communication enabled the individual children to communicate at their own level of ability.

Clare was fortunate to be part of a team that recognised how unique the needs were of the children she worked with and that training unique to the workplace was required. Clare studied feeding and drinking, devising specialised programmes for individuals including feeding children who had PEG’s (Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy.) The opportunities for further development strengthened allowing Clare to study and become an NVQ assessor and to learn CPR for children who have multiple disabilities.

Clare works full time as a school nurse; she is part of a team of school nurses based at a health clinic. Her work covers a geographical area covering primary and senior schools, looking after over 2000 school children. She saw an opportunity in school health when services were changing locally. Clare participated in a programme devised to train school nurses. This programme covered vaccinations, consent, sexual health, continence and other related topics to health. Clare studied for a diploma in Health Care Studies at Nottingham University.

A Day in the Life of Clare Roberts (School Nurse)

I am starting the day in a meeting, not an ordinary one where everyone daydreams but a child protection conference. I walk into these meetings with a very professional open mind, honestly, however in a few minutes I can be sat wishing I was elsewhere. Today’s meeting is to decide whether to place two young children on the Child Protection Register.

As a school nurse I will be invited to all child protection conferences for the school’s I cover. I submit a report about the child/young person, I write briefly about their personal details including family, if I have had any intervention with this child and what that actually entailed. It may be as simple as having worked in class with the child or as complex as noticing a physical injury that the child has received. The report is very difficult to write, it needs to be very detailed particularly when I have had experience of working with the child or young adult. There are times when I do not know the child; I am ‘the school nurse’ for over 2000 children. I have the full support of a team of health professionals who work solely within child protection. Their experience and support is invaluable.

The meeting takes time; everyone reads the reports submitted, individuals are asked to add to the discussion and a decision is made not to add the children to the Child Protection Register. The parents were really in need. The meeting becomes a positive one which highlights the needs of the parents and raises awareness that they need support and input. The school now have an improved awareness that the parents cannot read so they need to improve their methods of communicating with the family. The family will have the support from a family centre and the professionals based there. The young children will hopefully benefit greatly and I hope they will reach their own potential.

I spend an hour with a mum chatting about her son. He is eight years old and incontinent at night. I have got to know this family not via the GP which is the most common way but because of an open evening. The mother asked the teacher whether it was ‘normal’ that her son still wet the bed. It is my first visit and I want to stress that her son is experiencing a common problem and that we can work together to resolve it. We agree to a plan of action, she will keep a diary of when her son is wet, what he has drunk and eaten daily and any other stresses which may seem relevant. I will pop back in a couple of weeks.

I have the pleasure, pure pleasure, of working in an infant’s class until I finish. I am easily manipulated by lovely teachers; somehow I have agreed to play and teach about personal care. I should stress the importance of preparing for any work with a class, setting learning outcomes that are attainable for the age group and ability. But I won’t; I shall end my day fantasising with the children about what ‘germs’ really look like and how to ‘kill’ them with super soap. I will get wet and messy – such a perfect day!

My role is challenging and dynamic. No day is ever the same and for this I am grateful, on occasions it is the worst job in the world. It is a job which has the work prescribed i.e. the vaccination programmes, regular health screening and yet it also offers so much freedom to develop health education unique to the school and the needs of everyone in the school.

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