It is a near certainty that Birmingham City Council will never be able to secure popular support for its proposal to ask teaching assistants to carry out medical procedures at special schools that currently are performed by NHS-trained nurses.
However much evidence is produced to support a claim that anyone can be trained in techniques such as changing tracheostomy tubes and administering injections to dangerously ill children, the council simply will not be believed by most parents.
And if the head teachers of four of the 39 schools involved are to be believed, the plans outlined in a consultation document are downright dangerous.
It is difficult to recall in recent times such an angry letter as that written by the heads of Victoria and Cherry Oak Schools, Brays School, Wilson Stuart School and Sports College and Calthorpe School and Sports College.
The heads claim that taking responsibility for administering medical techniques away from nurses amounts to an abdication of responsibility by the council and could even result in the death of a child.
In the letter, the heads warn: “Compelling teaching assistants to undertake such medical tasks is dangerous, unrealistic and inevitably life threatening, regardless of the vague additional superficial training proposal.”
There are also claims that the schools may be forced to exclude seriously ill children because the risk involved with passing care responsibilities to teaching assistants would be too much in today’s litigious society.
In education-speak, the message to the council is clear: “Must do better. See me.”
It would appear that the letter, or the leaking of it to this newspaper, has prompted something of a re-think by the council, although it is far from clear that the claim by one head teacher that the document is being withdrawn is true.
The council states that it held a “very amicable meeting” with the four heads, which requires an imaginative leap of faith given the extreme tone of the letter. The consultation is to be “reviewed”, which might or might not signal a climb down or compromise.
It is important to point out that this is not directly a cost cutting exercise. The council’s case is that nursing cover for special schools is unfairly distributed and that what is being proposed will allow for a more equitable distribution of resources.
The consultation document goes to great lengths to stress that the medical techniques to be performed by teaching assistants are in line with Royal College of Nursing guidelines listing procedures “which may be safely taught and delegated to non-health qualified staff”.
Teaching assistants will be fully trained by qualified medical staff and are in line for a pay rise to reflect their new responsibilities, the consultation document adds.
And yet, despite all of the reassuring words, the fact remains that four schools populated by seriously and terminally ill children are set to have their level of care downgraded so that there is no on-site nursing provision.
The council and the NHS can no doubt come up with a barrage of statistics showing how teaching assistants can be trained to safely carry out quite complex medical techniques, but the fact remains that most people will not accept this to be the case.
In particular, parents of children at the four special schools must fear that care standards will be cut, whatever anyone says to the contrary.
