School Nursing

When dealing with our school nursing team you might meet or contact:

• School Nurse: a registered nurse with further specialist qualification in public health at degree or masters level
• Staff Nurse: a registered nurse with additional experience in public health, child health and development
• Nursery Nurse: qualified in child development with training in sleep, behavioural interventions and promotion of healthy eating
• School Health Assistant: experienced in working with children and young people in schools and in the community
• Administrator: provide clerical support to the school nursing team

A message from your school nursing team from MarComms on Vimeo. 

• Measuring the height and weight of children in Reception year and Year 6 as part of the National Childhood Measurement Programme (NCMP). After the screenings and measurements are completed, you will receive a copy of the results. If your child’s measurements fall outside the healthy weight range you will be sent a letter to your home address with further advice and information. For further information about the programme please visit the NHS website. Visit our Healthy lifestyle pages for more information on maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
• Checking the hearing of children in Reception year (hearing screening) at schools in Bracknell and West Berkshire. Children in Reading and Wokingham schools will not routinely be screened but this will be offered if concerns are raised about their hearing in the health questionnaire.
• Checking the sight of children in Reception year (vision screening) at schools in Bracknell Forest. For children at schools in Wokingham, Reading and West Berkshire, this check is done by orthoptist teams from the Royal Berkshire Hospital.
• Reviewing completed health questionnaires from parent and carers for all children in Reception year.
• Providing confidential health advice and support to children and young people of school age and their families on a range of health-related topics, including:
  • Long-term medical conditions such as asthma, epilepsy and acute allergy
  • Bed wetting (enuresis), which includes advice on toilet training and use of nappies, drinking patterns, bed wetting alarms and medical therapies. For further advice you may find the Enuresis Resource and Information Centre (ERIC) website helpful. School nurses run enuresis clinics which you can refer to directly, please contact us (details in section below). Please see our toilet training and bedwetting pages for more help.
  • Behavioural or emotional difficulties
• Working with other health services to get children and young people with non-complex needs or disabilities the specialist services they need.
• Offering support and advice to families regardless of your child’s age on weight management and healthy lifestyles. For additional advice you may find the NHS healthy weight (opens in new window) and advice for parents pages (opens in new window) useful. Please also see our information on Eating, allergies and healthy lifestyle, which also contains information on supporting with fussy eating.
• Working closely with children and young people who have been identified as needing to be safeguarded or ‘looked after’ by the local authority.
• Keeping school staff up to date on common medical conditions such as asthma and epilepsy.
• Where needed, we can refer a child or young person to other services such as GPs, speech and language therapy, audiology, Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), dietiticians, talking therapies, paediatricians (through their GP), children’s social care and voluntary services.
• Playing an active role in keeping children safe in accordance with the government policy ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children (March 2015)’.
   

Your child’s personal information remains confidential. We will only share information with other health or social care professionals if it is necessary and not usually without permission. However, it may be necessary for us to do this in exceptional cases.

We are committed to providing the highest standards of care and welcome your views on our service. If you would like to comment please contact your local school nursing team.

You may find it useful to also look at other children’s services provided by Berkshire Healthcare such as Child and adolescent mental health services, or therapy services 

We do not provide the school aged immunisation programme but have close links with the Berkshire Healthcare immunisation service, which offers immunisations to all children attending a school (state and independent) in Berkshire. You can find out more about the immunisation programme on the NHS website or on our immunisation pages.

We run bedwetting (enuresis) clinics, which you can refer to directly. Please contact us using the details in the section below. Please see our toilet training and bedwetting pages for more help.

If you have an appointment at one of our enuresis clinics, please see the films below to find out what to expect.

Rowan's Children's Centre 

Hillcroft House, West Berkshire

Whitley Children's Centre

Wokingham Hospital