School nurses open up direct line to young people

Published: 22 April 2009

CAROL TILLING and LISA PLEDGER, school nurses in NHS Eastern and Coastal Kent Community Services, take a teen-friendly approach to keeping in touch with pupils who need advice and support.

Designed to improve accessibility to the School Nursing Service, our mobile phone service for young people was initially launched in 2005 as a pilot in one of the most deprived parts of Eastern and Coastal Kent and has since been rolled out across the whole area.

The initiative, now embedded in the core School Nurse Service, has been driven by national strategies and directives such as the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy and Every child matters outcomes. It operates in line with safeguarding policies and procedures while also adhering to strict mobile phone policy and guidelines.

The most frequent queries from young people are about sexual health, emotional health, smoking prevention and general health.

Teenagers can either text or phone and get a reply within 24 hours. If we don't manage to deal with their problem at that point, we will initiate face-to-face contact or, if more appropriate, signpost another local service.

Positive marketing all round

For the target audience, the service comes across as young person-friendly, universal, easily accessible, confidential and anonymous. It provides a quick response, giving up-to-date advice, support and reliable information.

For the School Nursing Service, it's proved to be a cost effective means of communicating with young people and an efficient use of time and resources. It has been well supported by our key partners and the PCT.

Our mobile phone policy was influential in producing the RCN policy for mobile phone services and has been deemed an area of best practice*.