With one voice!

NAHHT are currently in discussion and liaison with the National Association for Hospital School Leaders and National PRUs organisation about how we can present a united front to support the needs of children and young people in alternative provisions at this time of change.

It's Conference time again!

It's time to book your place at the NAHHT conference.
Please go to our Conference Page for all the details and application forms.

National Survey of Medical Provision

We are trying to collect some credible national data to demonstrate to the Ministers and Department of Education the nature and complexity of the work that we do everyday in our provisions for children and young people with medical and mental health needs.

We have consulted with colleagues from the Department of Education to ensure that the data we are capturing is information that they are seeking: they have been very encouraging of us to do this survey in order to get a national picture of the nature and diversity of the work that goes on.

We make no apologies that the form is long and extremely comprehensive. There has never been such a large data collection from medical educational provisions ever attempted before.

We appreciate that the last thing you want to do at the moment is complete a huge onerous form, but we implore you to take the time to complete it. The publication of the results and the opportunity to celebrate what we do will be of benefit to us and the children and young people with whom we work.

Please could we ask you to return your completed survey to ckitchen@northamptonshire.gov.uk by 17th December 2011? If you have any problems or would like some support to completed it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will more than happy to support you.

Our plan is to analyse the results over the holiday break so that we have a report with recommendations to present to the ministers by the middle of January 2012. We are in discussion with the National foundation for Educational Research to get our findings quality assured and published.

Many thanks in anticipation for your co-operation,

Cath Kitchen
On behalf of the National Association of Hospital and Home Teaching.

Just click on the links below to open the documents.
Please remember to save the completed form on your PC and send it to:
ckitchen@northamptonshire.gov.uk

Survey Notes for completion.doc

SURVEY OF EDUCATIONAL PROVISION FOR CHILDREN final oct 2011.doc

Contact with the Department for Education

Following our letter to Michael Gove about our concerns about pupils with medical needs in the White Paper, we did receive a reply from his department who offered to meet with us.

Despite many e mails, no-one then got in contact.

However, we have met with Francis Loughran who has been commissioned by the minister Sarah Teather (SEN review) to conduct a survey about the quality of provision for pupils with medical needs. Francis has little previous experience in this area, but listened with interest and has started to try and visit a variety of settings to get a ‘feel’ for the work that we do. He wants to do a survey to investigate further and we have offered to support him in that.

Look out for the survey on this site once it is published.

Chris Seymour from our committee is going to speak to another representative about funding for medical provisions, including hospital schools, if they were to become free schools or academies. 

New document for self evaluation

Check out the documents page for a paper from CfBT. They have done an international literature review to find what makes an effective alternative provision. They have produced an evaluation grid which we may find useful when we no longer have to complete the self evaluation form on the Ofsted site.

Research Documents click here

Changes to National Healthy Schools

The NHSS now longer exists, but there is a new template and tool kit in place for self assessment on the DfE website.

Check out the new resources in the Healthy Schools section.

National Children's Bureau audit results &
NfER report on the role of the primary mental health worker in education

The National Children's Bureau commissioned an audit of 268 young people in 6 pupil referral units across the country. Although there was only a small number of medical needs pupils included, the conclusions are the same and it is good to see our voices backed by research findings.

There is a good qualitative audit form at the back of the paper which I have adapted (see word document) and am going to trial to see if it is a more robust way of collecting the invaluable qualitative information. I am hoping to do a thematic analysis - anyone else interested in trialling it and want to compare results?
Please let me know!

NfER have published a report on the role of the primary mental health worker in education which also makes interesting reading. We are bidding for some money to have our own primary mental health worker and found this useful - watch this space!! .

You can find the National Childrens's Bureau audit results and the NfER report in the new Research section of our Policies page.

Managing the 25 hour provision

How are people managing with this?
Are all your pupils able to access 25 hours?
What creative ways are you using to increase the number of hours without the cost being too prohibitive?
In our new e-Learning Section is a spreadsheet of some of the providers we have found. My thanks to Lynn Lucchese for doing the major part of this and collaborating so effectively. We are not endorsing any of the products and are interested in anyone’s feedback as to who they have used and how good they were.
We are hoping that a number of them will be at our conference in March to be able to talk to you in more depth.
Please e mail your comments (ckitchen@northamptonshire.gov.uk) so we can share .