Children at Ysgol Heol Goffa will be looked after this term, as last term, by teachers and classroom assistants doing medical jobs a nurse would normally do. The two ministers responsible cannot agree on when that changes.
Lynne Neagle, Labour’s education spokesperson, told the Senedd on Wednesday that the health minister had written to a campaigner saying guidance on supporting pupils with healthcare needs “would be published some time in 2027”.
The education minister’s written answer to her, she said, was that “this work is at an early stage” and “we are not yet in a position to confirm a timescale for the publication of revised guidance”.
“So, there is a difference there between what two ministers have said,” Ms Neagle said.
Catheters and feeding lines, done by staff “not trained for” them
Ms Neagle said support staff were “on too many occasions” asked to help with “complex medical issues in schools, including things like attending to catheters and feeding lines”, tasks they were “either not trained for or certainly not remunerated for”.
She reminded the chamber that Estyn had issued a safeguarding letter to the school after last year’s inspection “around issues around healthcare support in school”.
The work, she said, “has to be driven at Government level by the Cabinet Ministers responsible, in both health and education”, and she asked Anna Brychan for an assurance she would work with the health minister’s team so the interface between the two was “absolutely seamless”.
Ms Brychan’s reply in full: “Yes, that is an assurance I can absolutely give her. Thank you.”
The 2027 letter that was “a kick in the teeth”
Some of the children at the school have breathing tubes fitted at their throats, some need help with catheters and some have seizures, and there is no nurse permanently based there. Parents and the headteacher have been asking for one for five years.
In August, health minister Mabon ap Gwynfor’s letter to Llanelli town councillor Shaun Greaney said staff “have received appropriate training and have been assessed as competent”, and that where a nurse should come from “remain[s] a matter for the relevant local authority and health board”.
Lana Dakin, whose eight-year-old son Jac attends the school, said at the time that “getting a letter that just talks about training and guidance in 2027 is a kick in the teeth”.
Hywel Dda University Health Board says a community children’s nursing service visits the school and it trains staff there to carry out the procedures the children need. What it does not provide is a nurse based at the school full time.
The Children’s Commissioner for Wales asked to meet the health board about the same issue in February.
Earlier in the session Ms Brychan said support staff “do an enormously positive and important job” and that health “and arguably also preventative health” would be key partners in deciding how to support them, but “I can’t give her a timeline at this point”.
The school was built for fewer than 100 pupils and now teaches close to 150 children with complex needs. A new £35m Ysgol Heol Goffa is due to open in September 2029.
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