{"id":15312,"date":"2018-05-31T15:30:06","date_gmt":"2018-05-31T14:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=15312"},"modified":"2020-11-12T12:58:43","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T12:58:43","slug":"school-nurse-jobs-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=15312","title":{"rendered":"School nurse jobs threat"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The health and wellbeing of children in the West Midlands are under threat as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0098significant\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 number of school nurse jobs could be axed by the Birmingham School Health Advisory Service, Unite warned today (May 31).<\/p>\n

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The threat to the school nurse workforce has come from cash-strapped Birmingham city council, the commissioner of these services for school-aged children, which is considering, it is understood, decommissioning the current service.<\/p>\n

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Unite blamed the Tory government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s swingeing reductions to local government funding in England for the cuts that could affect about 170,000 school-aged children in the Birmingham area.<\/p>\n

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Unite, which embraces the Community Practitioners\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and Health Visitors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Association (CPHVA), called for the proposed \u00c2\u01412m worth of cuts to the service by the city council for the financial year, starting July 2018,\u00c2\u00a0to be halted.<\/p>\n

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“While Theresa May\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s government discusses food adverts and tax on sweets, the reality is that vital face-to-face services for our children in Birmingham face decimation,” said Unite regional officer Su Lowe.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bSchool nursing, once again, faces the biggest hit to our community health services and Unite is concerned for the future of this very British institution that has served vulnerable school-aged children for many decades,” she added.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWithout the school nurses, who will attend to our children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s health and well-being? The occasional measuring of a child\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s weight is no substitute for supporting those families with complex needs, such as mental ill-health, child protection and other high impact issues, such as female genital mutilation (FGM) and child sexual exploitation (CSE).<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bSchool nursing services are, sometimes, the only access many children and young people have to health services and it is feared the most vulnerable will slip through the net as a result of these significant cuts.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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This situation is made worse because of the uncertainty hanging over the school health advisory service\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s future. The contract ends in July and no decision, as yet, has been forthcoming regarding future commissioning.<\/p>\n

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Su Lowe added, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bOur children deserve their school nurses and their specialist skills and experience. Our members are devastated by the threat to the services and their jobs \u00e2\u20ac\u201c these cuts should be reversed; and there needs to be clarity and transparency on future commissioning.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Birmingham School Health Advisory Service is part of the Birmingham Community Healthcare Trust where Unite has 600 members.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The health and wellbeing of children in the West Midlands are under threat as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0098significant\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 number of school nurse jobs could be axed by the Birmingham School Health Advisory Service, Unite warned today (May 31).   The threat to the school nurse workforce has come from cash-strapped Birmingham city council, the commissioner of these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12794,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[27,443,675],"wps_subtitle":"Birmingham council plans to axe jobs could hit vulnerable children","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15312"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15312"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26161,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15312\/revisions\/26161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}