Job summary

We are looking for a Senior Special Nurse to join our service!

The schools we work with provide education to children and young people who have Special Educational Needs and complex health conditions. The Special School Nursing team works collaboratively with children, families, school staff and the wider multi-disciplinary team within the education setting to ensure a supportive and caring learning environment. The team are responsible for ensuring the health needs of the children are met using a family centred approach to assessing, planning, implementing, and evaluating the health needs of the children within a specialist education provision. The role will include teaching and training of school staff, creating care plans and supervision of delegated skills including children and young people with a range of complex care, epilepsy and seizure management, enteral feeding, and tracheostomy.

Provide caseload management for the cohort of pupils within the school and liaise closely with the Integrated Childrens Community Nursing Service in Portsmouth. Provide strong leadership and management to junior staff and have the opportunity to shape and develop the service with your line management.

You will primarily work onsite in the school, but there will be requirement to work and support at other sites/iCCN service areas as part of your role. The role requires a commitment to predominantly take annual leave in school holidays due to the model of working onsite when pupils are in school.

Main duties of the job

• The Senior Special school nurse will provide and manage specific skilled nursing care to children with a variety of nursing needs, including long term conditions and complex and multiple needs, life limiting conditions, learning disabilities and those with challenging behaviour and/or autism related diagnoses.
• The care will be provided in the special schools with potential for meetings and learning to be carried out off site in other community settings.
• The role requires a nurse with paediatric and/or learning disabilities expertise to work in collaboration with the special schools to ensure the children attending can access health promotion, public health programme and specialist nursing programmes alongside their multidisciplinary team. The nurse will be providing specialist advice to other professionals, promoting evidence-based practice.
• To line manage junior special school nurses and health care assistants within the special schools.

About us

We have been working with other local NHS Trusts to create a new organisation, bringing together all community, mental health and learning disability services from across Hampshire and Isle of Wight. Subject to approvals, the aim is for the new Trust to be formed by the end of 2024.

Project Fusion is the name for the programme to create the new combined NHS Foundation Trust. Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust will be bringing the services into a single organisation will result in more consistent care, more equitable access to services irrespective of postcode, and a more sustainable workforce and services. The new organisation will operate locally to ensure services can best meet the needs of different communities.

The new Trust will be comprised of all the services currently provided by Solent NHS Trust and Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, the community, mental health and learning disability services provided by Isle of Wight NHS Trust and child and adolescent mental health services delivered in parts of Hampshire by Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

Colleagues will transfer to the new organisation under Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) -- known as TUPE on the day the trust is formed. TUPE is a legal process to ensure you transfer out of one organisation and into another, maintaining the terms and conditions of your employment.