Health and Medication
School Health Service
Health checks are offered throughout the school year to ensure that possible medical problems are picked up at the right time for medical advice. The school nurse will begin this health care programme with a health interview, including a vision and hearing test, with your child during their second term at school. Your written permission is required before your child can be seen by the Health Service.
Head lice sometimes occur, and should you find them on your child please tell us immediately. Head lice are not a sign of dirty heads, in fact they prefer clean heads. If we know of any outbreaks then we can send out information about the current treatment, as recommended lotions change regularly.
Accident or Injury Procedure
In the case of minor accidents, first aid will be given and parents will be informed. The majority of staff have undertaken a first aid course and if further treatment is required, we will attempt to contact you immediately. In the event of a parent not being available at the time of an emergency, school staff will contact the local surgery and will act on the advice of the medical officer consulted. Please inform us when your child begins school of any medical condition and of any allergy, such as to elastoplast.
Illness
The advice we have received from the County Director for Education, after consultation with the District Health Authority, is that when children are ill, it is the parents’ responsibility to ensure that they receive proper care and that when they are unwell, children should not be sent to school. The administering of medicine to the children is also the parents’ responsibility. Recent Local Education Authority advice to schools states “only in the case of certain children with a long term medical condition would it be necessary for medication to be administered during the school day. The congenital six hourly dosage can usually be extended to eight hours and only very rarely is timing critical”.
Prescribed medicine will be administered only where it is essential that a dosage is given during the school day, but parents are asked not to send medicine to school which can reasonably be given outside school hours. Any parent bringing medicine to school for their child must personally hand it in to the office along with written instructions signed by a parent regarding time and dosage. It must also be the parents’ responsibility to deliver medicine to school and collect it at the end of the day. Parents will be asked to sign a form giving permission for the school to administer medication. This is in line with our policy on First Aid and the Administration of Medicines.
Please do not send children to school if they are ill and unable to concentrate on their work. We do not have the facilities to look after them, and difficulty is created for the class teacher who has to give one child a lot of attention whilst still teaching the rest of the class. If your child has had diarrhoea or sickness we ask that you keep them at home until 48 hours after they have eaten and not suffered diarrhoea or sickness.
Please notify the school if your child has an infectious disease. Occasionally doctors give conflicting advice on how soon after an illness children should return to school. Parents should not send children to school until there can be no doubt that they are no longer contagious and in the case of certain illnesses that all spots have completely gone.
If a child is taken ill at school, it may be necessary to contact the parent so that the child can be taken home, or in the case of an accident, to the doctor or the hospital. It is, therefore essential that we know where to contact parents during school hours. With the parent’s permission, a child will be sent home with another responsible adult. This information is requested on admission to school but parents must keep us informed of any changes either in telephone numbers or workplaces. An emergency number must always be available to us.
Asthma Policy
We have a number of children in school who need to use inhalers. We have a policy which states that each child should have access to their inhaler as and when they need it. We require parents to inform us of their child’s treatment and suggested doses. Every inhaler in school should be labelled with the child’s name. We also have a written procedure for all adults to follow in the event of any child suffering a severe asthma attack in school.