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04Aug08

NO SCHOOL NURSE FIGURES FOR STRETFORD & URMSTON

Stretford and Urmston's Conservative Parliamentary Candidate, Mark Versallion, has this week attacked the Government over its failure to provide figures for the number of school nurses in the Trafford PCT. This comes at a time when only half the school nurses promised by Labour are available nationwide.

Nationwide figures by PCT were obtained from the Government in answer to a parliamentary question but the statistics for eleven PCTs, one of which was Trafford, were omitted.

Mark Versallion commented, "the Trafford PCT area has 38,875 children aged 5-19 yet we cannot get an answer from the Government on the numbers of school nurses."

The Government has urged PCTs to automatically send the parents of children who have been weighed at school, their child's results. However, new figures uncovered by the Conservatives reveal that a vital part of the follow up to this process - ensuring there are enough school nurses - has been neglected.

In 2005 Labour promised a school nurse for "each cluster or group of primary schools and the related secondary school" but the figures reveal:

• In some parts of England, Labour have provided only half the number of school nurses they promised.

• According to the Government there are no figures available for the number of school nurses in 11 Primary Care Trusts, including Trafford. Four of these are Spearhead Primary Care Trusts – some of the most health deprived areas in England.

• 30 Primary Care Trusts have some nurses doing school nurse work but none with a specialist school nursing qualification. Nine of these are Spearhead Primary Care Trusts.

• Some Primary Care Trusts have unmanageably high ratios of schoolchildren to each school nurse. For example, Norfolk PCT has just one school nurse for a population of 121,000 children.

Commenting, Stretford and Urmston's parliamentary spokesman, Mark Versallion, said, “School nurses make a real difference in helping children develop healthy habits early in life - and they are often the ones best trained to spot problems at an early stage.

“If we are to avoid stigmatising children after being weighed then there needs to be sympathetic follow up care, but the Labour Government has failed to address the chronic shortage of school nurses."

 

Notes to Editors

In the Public Health White Paper 2005, the Government promised a school nurse for every secondary school. It said: ‘We are providing new funding so that by 2010 every PCT - working with children's trusts and local authorities - will be resourced to have at least one full-time, year-round, qualified school nurse working with each cluster or group of primary schools and the related secondary school.’ (Department of Health, Choosing Health: making healthy choices easier, 24 February 2005).

* Source: National Health Service hospital and community health services: Qualified nursing staff in the school nursing area of work, as at 30 September 2007.