School Health

We rated it as good because:

• Staff and managers were committed to providing good quality school health services and were constantly seeking to improve practice. We found managers had already identified all but one of the risks we found and they were working to reduce them.
• Staff were compassionate and actively worked to support the most vulnerable children, young people and families as evidenced by their work to support families during the Covid-19 pandemic, for which they won a national award. Reaching out to families was an embedded part of their practice.
• The service worked well with local organisations to meet the needs of children, young people and families and was involved in numerous multiagency forums and joint pieces of work.
• The service was thinking creatively in the face of national staff shortages and had established some innovative posts to attract school leavers into this area of work. It was doing well in respect of retaining staff once recruited and staff sickness was low, recent staff departures were for positive reasons, such as promotion.
• Staff worked well with other services for the benefit of children and young people. Staff provided care and treatment based on national guidance and evidenced-based practice but also developed their own best practice tools to meet the needs of children, young people and their families. Staff advised families on how to lead healthier lives and supported them to make decisions about their children’s care.
• Managers had access to a reliable database which kept them informed of progress against key performance indicators and other relevant data. This helped them to maintain good oversight of the service and individual staff performance.
• Staff were supported to do their jobs well. They received regular supervision, appraisal, mandatory training and additional training appropriate to their role.

However:

• The service was carrying a high level of vacancies in specific roles, although this was improving.
• The safeguarding children policy did not accurately reflect current national guidance.
• Audiometer headsets were not cleaned between each use.
• Staff did not have the capacity to attend all the statutory meetings they needed to, although the service was taking steps to remedy this.
• The audit schedule had slipped during the Covid-19 pandemic, but this was on the verge of improving.
• Some parents had not been offered copies of the assessments and care plans completed by School Health staff.
• Staff did not have access to health information in local community languages, such as leaflets on common health issues.