Claire has workied in Independent Boarding Schools for 18 years and has a wealth of experience running a medical room, liaising with the Heads of Pastoral Care, Houseparents, and communicating with parents, ensuring compliance, training staff and developing the mental health and wellbeing care of staff and pupils.
When Claire started at Beechwood Park in 2011, the medical room was a place for children to have a glass of squash at breaktime if they fell over – something which did not help with exercise or social time with friends. Claire built the surgery to become a place where medical care, triage and first aid were a priority, and given space, facilities, training and equipped to ensure that was a focus for all first aiders in the school.
Further, Claire developed the medical room to be a hub of information about the wellbeing of children and staff. The medical room was a place to drop in and discuss a child who wasn’t quite themselves, and Claire developed a culture of sharing information with form tutors, heads of year and SLT through weekly staff meetings, and specific pastoral meetings. This grew into the referral system for art therapy, counselling a space for a time out.
Claire also drew together medical policies, re-wrote the handbooks, and developed practice-based policies that echoed and followed EYFS, OFSTED, NMS and ISI guidance so that the boarding house and medical room were compliant. Claire changed the initial medical forms to garner more relevant medical data from parents, and updated the MIS so that certain information was retrievable by form teachers and sports staff. From here, Claire developed CPD for staff in basic first aid, plus sports coach specific training such as sports injuries, concussion and red flags.
Claire can help your school, medical room or boarding house to get on top of policy writing, developing pastoral referral systems, engender pastoral sharing and help create a rolling training programme for staff. This will ensure that medical provision in the boarding house and school are compliant, and provide outstanding care for the pupils.
Claire can help you to develop in the following areas:
First Aid, for Educators.
