Background
Specialist nurses deliver the national immunisation programme in schools in Northumberland, Newcastle, North Tyneside and Gateshead. This covers around 500 schools and 130,000 children and young people.
The national immunisation programme aims to give children the best protection against a range of infections and diseases. This is to ensure that they are protected from infancy, through their teenage years and into adulthood.
The programme includes:
- Annual flu vaccination for children from reception to year 11 in mainstream schools and up to year 13 in special schools
- HPV for all children in year 8 to protect against different HPV-related cancers
- 3-in-1 teenage booster for diphtheria, tetanus, polio and meningitis ACWY for all pupils aged 13-14
Any young person who has missed any of their teenage vaccinations will be offered these again, either in school or a community clinic.
The team also offers MMR vaccinations to those children and young people who have not completed the recommended 2 doses of the vaccine. This are given to children and young people, via appointment in community clinics.
The team works with a range of partners:
- Public Health England
- Sschools (including state, independent and special schools)
- pupil referral units
- Home-educated children
- Traveller families
- GPs
- 0-19 community services
- Looked-after children’s teams
The service is offered to all children up to the age of 18 years old, either living in, or resident in the North of Tyne region.
For more information, visit our immunisation service page.
What we've done
- Increased community engagement to gain awareness of any barriers, for example, cultural or language.
- Introduced an approach of co-creation, co-design and co-production to ensure services meet the needs of communities.
- This includes responding to feedback to overhaul where and when clinics took place - evening and weekend clinics taking place at venuse including sports centre and the Metrocentre.
- Worked with Jewish community leaders in Gateshead (which was a new contract for the service in September 2023) to gain understanding. This resulted in a rabbi providing cultural awareness training to all staff about dress code, use of technology, restricted days and specific concerns around the HPV vaccine.
- Attended or supported various events to raise awareness and visibility of the team - assemblies, parents' evenings, health promotion events, PSHE lesson plans.
- Attended schools with high levels of digital poverty to support with completing consent forms.
- Created link nurse roles for specific areas of focus - needle phobias or anxiety, looked-after children, home-schooled children and pupils at special schools.
- Designated a named nurse for each school to build relationships, links and understanding.
What's next?
- We have already introduced additional forms of communication such as text message reminders, but a full strategy is being developed, engaging with schools and communities to ensure that is fit for purpose.
- Further engagement with more community leaders.
- Continue to develop the community clinics programme and work with families to ensure we are meeting their needs.
- Introduce additional support for families impacted by digital poverty.
- Improving data collection to inform future campaigns and developments.