Brent School Nursing team supports schools to achieve asthma friendly status

Our Brent School Nursing team have been supporting schools in the Brent borough to achieve asthma friendly status.

This initiative is run through our school nurses who provide training to equip school staff with the skills and knowledge needed to recognise an asthma attack in children, managing an emergency, and how to correctly administer medication.

Once a school has completed training and have demonstrated their management of medication and care plans in school, they will be able to obtain a free asthma starter kit (includes salbutamol blue inhaler, spacer to deliver the medication, medication log, and cleaning process) by filling in a form from the school nurse and collecting their kit from a local pharmacy. The school nurse will continue to provide ongoing support as and when needed even after achieving the status.

Petra El Habashy, Team Lead Brent School Nursing at CLCH said: “So far, we have supported 11 schools in Brent to achieve asthma friendly status and are currently working with over 25 schools to provide training and support for them to achieve this status. The training delivered has helped to upskill our partners to empower school staff to build on their confidence and understanding of asthma.

One of the school’s welfare assistants added: “The Brent School Nursing team really knew their stuff. I feel more confident in understanding and supporting the needs of asthmatic children as well as in communicating advice to parents.”

The work that the team does has been featured in ‘Your Brent’ magazine (p20) – a quarterly magazine published by Brent council which includes news about what has been happening in borough.