Dear parents and carers
Mounting pressures on the teams who manage first aid for students in our school have made it necessary to review the way that service is operated. As well as a significant increase in students visiting our Reception, the school has an unusually large occurrence of students with a high degree of medical need. We are making some changes to the way we operate our medical support and would like to enlist your help in passing this message on to our student community to reinforce the briefing they will receive at school. Next week we will pilot the changes, giving us an opportunity to adjust before introducing fully from 24th February.
Students with clear and urgent medical needs should go straight to Reception, or a first aider will be called to them. This means for example a student who is injured and/or bleeding; vomiting, has fainted or has a medical need obviously requiring urgent attention.
School staff trained in first aid are only first responders and not medical professionals. Please take the time to read this note on how far the school is able to go in administering treatment.
Students seeking assistance for any other medical issues will be directed in the first instance to Student Services. The team there will triage and decide whether to escalate as a medical emergency or to return the student to their normal activity. In most cases, you as a parent will be emailed to let you know that your child has sought assistance and, should they return within the hour, with their condition not having improved, we will ask you to collect them from school. As communicated recently, students should not under any circumstances engage in phone conversation or messaging with you around collection, this has an adverse impact on the normal functioning of our systems.
As a further measure, the school team will no longer issue paracetamol to students before Lesson 4 (12:10) and only then if absolutely necessary. A student who has required paracetamol earlier in the day may have taken it up to around 8:00am and it is unsafe to give another dose within 4 hours minimum.
Students will be briefed on these changes, and we ask for your consistent ongoing support in helping them to understand the service most appropriate to their immediate need or encouraging them to remain where they need to be, in lessons.
Out team has seen a significant increase in students arriving at school unwell. We ask that you refer to the NHS guidance “ Is my child too ill for school?” Whilst very aware of our obligations to maintain attendance, there is a detrimental effect on the student and those in close contact such that it may be better for a student to be absent for a short time and recover well, rather than contribute to the spreading of an illness.
Understandably these changes will take a little while to embed and experience over time will necessitate some tweaks to processes but fundamentally, by making these changes we aim to support both our students and our staff teams in what are frequently escalating to crisis conditions.
We aim to deliver quality lessons for all and to maintain this there are a couple of key points. No child should be out of their lesson during Periods 1,3 or 5 unless we have a medical indicator on record or there is an emergency. Students should not leave a classroom to fill a water bottle, collect a cup for water or visit IT services or Reception for enquiries, all of which can be done in break and lunch times.
With these changes we seek to enhance the culture of inclusion and safety at Perins as well as aid our student community in further building resilience.
Yours faithfully
Mark Nevola
Head of Perins School
