The Green Party is calling for a national framework for school nursing so every child in a low decile school – not just secondary – is guaranteed a basic level of nursing care.
Metiria Turei, Green Party co-leader, announced at the weekend the $30 million proposal to put dedicated public health nurses to work in every decile one to three primary and intermediate school.
At present the nurse-led School Based Health Service has embedded nurses in all decile 1 and 2 secondary schools and is being rolled out to all decile 3 secondary schools by 2016.
But public health and school nursing care in primary and intermediate schools differs from region to region with for example a public health nurse in Christchurch’s eastern suburbs covering nine schools including a number of low decile primary schools.
Turei said children in the most deprived neighbourhoods are three times as likely to be admitted to hospital for preventable illness than children from the least deprived neighbourhoods. "Our policy takes the health care to where it is most needed and where it is most easily accessed - low decile schools.”
Locating a nurse in every school and early childhood centre was a key recommendation in the New Zealand Nurses Organisation’s submission to the Green Paper on Vulnerable Children.
NZNO endorsed the Green Party plan with NZNO policy advisor and researcher Dr Jill Clendon saying there was “abundant evidence” that childen’s health improves if they can get school-based nursing services.
"Child poverty is a societal issue and responsibility for eliminating it should be shared. Funding nurses to practise in low decile schools addresses some of the links between poverty, ill health and educational underachievement," she said.
Judith Nowotarski, president of teacher union NZEI, said the policy was a step towad “making sure our children are healthy and ready to learn”.
Deborah Morris-Travers, manager of the child organisation collaboration group Every Child Counts, said the proposed policy would be welcome as one-third of the $6-8 billion spent annually “picking up the costs of child poverty” arose because of the “high health needs of children in poverty”.
Turei said nurses in schools could help with sore throats, skin infections and asthma before these turned into ‘huge problems’ for the child that could ‘seriously impact on their education and their chance at a good life’.
"Nurses already do a fantastic job in low decile secondary schools and some primary schools. But schools shouldn’t have to dip into their operations grants to fund this service.
"Our proposal is for a formal national framework for school nursing where every child from a lower decile school can be guaranteed a basic level of care from a nurse that is not funded out from schools operations budget.
"We propose engaging the profession to establish a scope of practice and model of care specific to primary school nursing, said Metiria Turei.
Meanwhile the New Zealand Medical Journal published in late April a 2011 pilot study involving a public health nurse-led clinic set up in a 400-pupil South Auckland primary school. In the first week of the 15-week pilot 31 skin infections were diagnosed and during the time 94 throat swabs were positive and the nurses involved made 137 home visits and 51 school-based parent consultations.
The success of the pilot lead to Counties Manukau District Health Board providing funding to supplement the central government contract for school-based sore throat swabbing by community health workers with one public health nurse per 400 children to offer wider child health services.
