Education campaigning activity summary (UK)

Epilepsy Action is supporting the Schools (Health Support) Bill and its second reading on Friday 8 May 2009.

In November 2008 Diabetes UK held a lobby at Westminster attended by over 200 children with diabetes, many of them meeting with their MP’s to ask questions about the lack of awareness and support for children with diabetes. From this Jim Cunningham, MP pledged his support and the School (Health Support) Bill was produced which looks to amend the Education and Inspections Act 2006. It will give schools a responsibility to promote health and wellbeing of children and young people with health conditions and be included within school inspections.
The Schools (Health Support) Bill aims to make sure:

schools are required to produce and implement medical conditions policies – in line with current guidance and best practice
school staff receive appropriate support and training to support children with health conditions
NHS bodies, local authorities and primary care trusts help schools fulfil their responsibilities
school inspections also look at how a school supports children with health conditions
every child with a health condition has an individual healthcare plan.

Do you have a story about your child and any issue they have at school due to their epilepsy? Or for further information please email lcreighton@epilepsy.org.uk

Update to the Schools (Health Support) Bill

The second reading on Friday 8 May 2009 started a good debate and received broad support from all parties. The Bill was withdrawn before it went to a vote as a number of commitments were made by government. They include:

further work on increasing the number of school nurses;
to ask Ofsted to include pupil’s well-being as an indicator to be looked at during the round of inspections starting in September 2009;
making sure the final Every Child Matters guidance includes reference to schools considering the health requirements of children with long term conditions; and
review and update ‘Managing medicines in Schools and Early Years settings’. This is a document to ensure children requiring medicines receive the support they need.

These are just a few of the commitments made. We will continue to work alongside Diabetes UK and the other supporting organisations to make sure that these commitments are carried out. An update on progress of the work we are doing will be reported here.