The closing date is 16 May 2025
Salary
£37,338 to £44,962 a year per annum
Job summary
- Are you newly qualified SCPHN, looking to show your innovation and determination in promoting health and supporting school aged children?
- Are you a hardworking, dedicated NMC registered school nurse with passion and drive who has great idea’s for making a difference?
- Would you like the chance to reshape and reinvigorate services to meet the needs of all families living in Medway?
- Are you passionate about the care you give to children and young people?
If you answered yes, we’ve got the perfect role for you!
We are a multi skilled team comprising of school nurses, school staff nurses, emotional well being practitioners, learning disability nurses and support staff. Together we enhance the health and wellbeing of children in Medway; working closely with our children’s therapy and health visiting colleagues as well as external agencies to provide children the best opportunity to learn and thrive.
Please note: Only applicants who hold the NMC Specialist Community Public Health Nursing (SCPHN) qualification will be considered for this role.
Main duties of the job
You will initiate and undertake health needs assessments for children and families, including vulnerable children of various ages.
You will plan and deliver interventions and be responsible for managing your diary.
You will be the link school nurse for a number of primary and secondary schools. Facilitating secondary school drop in sessions to give children and young people an opportunity to access healthcare.
You will be a role model for other team members, helping to shape the future school nurses through sharing experiences and encouraging learning.
You will be responsible for developing health promotion activities to raise the profile of school nursing and key public health messages.
You will facilitate links between children’s services and other agencies to promote health and wellbeing; ensuring the voice of the child is heard.
You will encourage and motivate children, young people and their families to engage in public health messages and change behaviour.
You will have knowledge of the key drivers and other relevant legislation/guidance for school nursing services; including legislation and guidance in the safeguarding of children and adults.
If you have an area of interest that can benefit the health and wellbeing of children and young people, we will encourage you to share your knowledge, develop the service and support you in meeting your goal.
Job responsibilities
- Communication and relationship skills
- Initiate and undertake agreed health assessments on children and families, including vulnerable children of various ages
- Facilitate and promote links between the childrens services and other agencies to promote health and wellbeing; ensuring the voice of the child is heard
- Encourage and motivate children, young people and their families to engage in public health messages and change behaviours
- Communicate highly complex difficult messages to parents or schools.
- Receive, translate and communicate highly complex information in a suitable format to the target audience, overcoming barriers to understanding
- Act as a link school nurse for an identified number of schools
- Knowledge, training and experience
- A registered nurse with the specialist community public health nursing qualification in school nursing
- Experience of working in a range of community settings including family homes, clinics and schools
- Mentorship qualification and experience of supporting pre and post qualification students
- Knowledge of the key drivers and other relevant legislation/guidance for school nursing services; including legislation and guidance in the safeguarding of children and adults
- Experience of employing evidence based practice and multi-disciplinary team working
- Experience of delivering presentations to children, young people and families as well as other professionals eg teaching staff
- Analytical and judgement skills
- Make clinical decisions involving a range of facts or situations including risk assessments; clinical need and disclosures
- Assess and identify the needs of individual children referred to the service, plan care and make appropriate referrals/signpost
- Complete holistic assessments considering the Think Family approach
- Assist in local audits, risk management and the review and development of local policies and guidelines
- Be actively involved in the collection and analysis of information for school health profiling
- Assess and evaluate the performance of team members, providing appropriate feedback, and participate in the appraisal process
- Provide targeted health interventions to children and young people with identified health needs
- Exercise leadership, judgment, and management to ensure excellent clinical practice, maintaining high standards of care
- Planning and organisational skills
- Manage and organise a defined caseload independently, addressing the health needs of children according to evidence based practice
- Provide targeted health interventions to children and young people with identified health needs
- Ensure the most effective use of human and physical resources within the team by appropriate delegation of work and use/application of resources.
- Contribute to meeting the learning and development needs of pre and post registration student nurses and new members of staff, which provides a positive culture to enhance learning and service improvement.
- Maintain accurate and contemporaneous health records in accordance with NMC and MCH standards
- To understand and work towards ensuring that services are delivered in accordance with the service specification
- Write and submit reports in a timely manner
- Facilitate regular meetings with link schools
- Manage own workload, reporting issues to the Lead School Nurse or Clinical Lead for PHN Schools, when difficulties arise, offering solutions where possible
- Physical skills
- Ability to travel to a range of community settings including home, clinic and schools in Medway and occasionally outside of Medway.
- Ability to carry equipment such as scales and Leicester measures
- Ability to use computer keyboards including laptops
- Responsibility for patient / client care
- Manage and organise a caseload, addressing the health needs of children according to evidence based practice and service provision
- Provide targeted health interventions to children and young people with identified need following holistic assessment
- Act as a link school nurse for an identified number of schools
- Contribute to the identification/assessment and support of vulnerable children, including those within the Safeguarding arena and represent the service at key partnership meetings inclusive of safeguarding meeting
- Participate in nurse-led clinics
- Facilitate/deliver training sessions where identified health needs require training for non-medical school staff
- Participate in targeted health promoting activities
- Advise on public health issues and infection control within the school community
- Identify vulnerability that may impact on the child or young persons health, education, school attendance
- Help children and young people to develop a knowledge of self-care, autonomy and decision making, including how to access health services
- Promote the safeguarding of children through multi-disciplinary team working and work within the Medway Safeguarding Childrens Partnership policies/procedures and guidance for the protection of children. Be aware of emerging issues such as sexual exploitation, gang violence and extremism
- Maintain caseload responsibility for children with a safeguarding plan and delegate appropriately to other members of the school nurse team
- Ensure that confidentiality and the rights of consent relating to young people are followed
- Report relevant clinical information/clinical issues to the Professional Lead and Clinical Team Leader
- Observe and maintain strict confidentiality with regards to any patient/family/staff/records and information in line with information governance
- Responsibility for policy and service development implementation
- Participate in clinical supervision as per organisation policy
- Actively participate in and support the development of evidence based practice and clinical audit in collaboration with lead professionals and managers
- To participate in service or practice initiatives to improve client care standards and outcomes
- Contributing to the development of proposals, by participating in working groups or providing feedback as required
- Responsibilities for financial and physical resources
- The School Nurse post does not carry any financial responsibility in relation to budget control
- Responsibilities for human resources (HR)
- Responsible for day-to-day supervision and line management of skill mix staff members within the team
- Development of skill mix staff
- Plan and co-ordinate team cover during sickness, annual leave and absence to meet the needs of the service
- Assist in the recruitment and induction of new staff members. Provide mentorship for pre-registration students
- Provide clinical supervision, mentorship and community experience to pre- and postregistration nursing/ midwifery and school nurse students.
- Maintaining own professional development and requirement to take part in appraisal
- Responsibilities for information resources
- Complete electronic records, in accordance with local and national guidance, ensuring that records are contemporaneous and accurate
- Maintain accurate and comprehensive nursing administrative and statistical records, regularly providing management with returns and statistics as requested
- Responsibilities for research and development (R&D)
- Undertake appropriate surveys and audit to influence local and national policies ensuring researched-based practice
- Gather research evidence required to ensure advances in nursing and high quality team performance
- Assist in the delivery of an agreed audit and development programme that links into the health care governance framework
- Freedom to act
- Guided by established policies and guidelines
- Professionally and legally responsible and accountable for all aspects of own work
- Works independently as an autonomous practitioner
Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential
- oRegistered Nurse (RN)
- BSc/MSc Hons Public Health Specialist Practitioner (School Nursing)
Desirable
- oNurse prescribing qualification
- Teaching/Mentorship qualification
- Supervision/Coaching qualification
Experience
Essential
- Caseload management
- Demonstrate leadership skills
- Awareness of current public health concerns
Desirable
- Teaching/Presentation skills
Special Knowledge/Expertise
Essential
- Good understanding of the healthy child programme
- Safeguarding
Desirable
- Qualifications in sleep, continence or behaviour
MCH Values
Essential
- Being caring and compassionate, quality and value and working in parthership
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Certificate of Sponsorship
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).