The asthma friendly schools (AFS) programme sets out clear, effective partnership arrangements between health, education and local authorities for managing children and young people with asthma at primary and secondary schools.
The asthma friendly schools programme will help you to meet standards 11, 17, 18, 39.
This includes the adoption of government policy on emergency inhalers and early years settings, such as:
- Children’s centres having access to education programmes for the wheezers.
- Children and young people have an individual healthcare /action plan in place.
It also means that schools should have the following in place:
1. Register of all children and young people with asthma.
2. Management plan for each child.
3. Named individual responsible for asthma in each school.
4. Policy for inhaler techniques and care of the children and young people with asthma.
5. Policy regarding emergency treatment.
6. System for identifying children who are missing school because of their asthma or who are not partaking in sports or other activities due to poor control.
Make yours an asthma friendly school
A range of helpful resources including the schools’ guide, presentations, asthma and allergy recommendations for schools, asthma friendly schools business proposal, schools service specifications and a job description for paediatric asthma nurse are available:
- View or download the London Asthma Schools guide
- The Newham School Health team is supporting all schools in the borough to have a whole school asthma approach. these videos aim to support parents, children and school staff with asthma management
- Children, Young People and Families Living with Asthma – A Hero Story
- My Asthma Hero travel pack- A kitbag for medication to keep Children and Young people safe
- Looking after my Asthma Spacer
- Presentations for teacher training and application of AFS programme
- Asthma & Allergy Recommendations for Schools
- Healthy London Partnership guidance – Supply of Salbutamol Inhalers to Schools
- Supply of Salbutamol Inhalers to Schools Pharmacy Guide 2020
- Asthma friendly schools business proposal
- Service specifications
- Job description for paediatric asthma nurse
- The Supporting Children’s Health programme, from Education for Health and aimed at non-healthcare professionals who look after children, may be useful for schools looking to become accredited as an Asthma Friendly School. This free online resource is a public access site with content developed by expert health professionals in consultation with teachers, sports coaches and children’s activity leaders
- An example of the role of Asthma Champions from Croydon
- Free online learning on children and young people’s asthma which is suitable for Asthma Champions to undertake.
Asthma posters to display in primary schools
Why not put these posters up for World Asthma Day which takes place every year on the first Tuesday in May, or #AskAboutAsthma which is held in September. From 2022 onwards, the campaign will take place one week ahead of week 38, where nationally, there is a rise in asthma attacks following the return to school after the summer holidays:
- Asthma review poster
- Asthma preventers poster
- Asthma plan poster
- Let’s talk about asthma poster
- Asthma inhaler poster
Examples
- Ealing children’s asthma project worked with 62 schools and 2000 children and their families teaching them about asthma and how to manage it correctly. They brought emergency department admissions down by 40% and demonstrated £90k savings. Learn more about the Ealing children’s asthma project.
- NHS Islington has been piloting an asthma friendly schools project based on the work done in Ealing. Through their healthy schools programme initiatives they have included a competition around smoking cessation linked to Stoptober as well as the appointment of a school nurse to run their asthma friendly schools programme and community nurses running clinics with primary care.
- Example asthma register for schools
- School assembly evaluation form
- Asthma friendly school criteria checklist
- School asthma plan
- School-wide asthma plan: An alternative to an individual school asthma plan is for a school-wide emergency asthma plan. See these slides from the school nursing team at Newham for more information.
- Standard asthma kit for a schools
- Whittington Health: How to use your spacer device
More Resources
Asthma innovation and Research team run a schools programme providing asthma education through training medical students. They have also developed some useful resources for children including the Asthmanauts comic book intending to help children with asthma learn more about their condition and how to use their inhalers. Parents and carers can help their child complete the comic book.
[ssba_hide]
Tagged: asthma
[ssba-buttons]