East Sussex School Health

Contact us

Text Your School Nurse

Need to speak to someone now contact us by text using our confidential text messaging service for parents and carers of children of ages 5 to 19 years and also young people aged between 11 to 19 years.

07507 332 473

Referring to the East Sussex School Health Service is easy:

0300 123 4062  – School Health One Point (SHOP)
kentchft.esschoolhealthservice@nhs.net
Online referral form (includes Ready Steady Go referral)

We are available from 8.30am until 5pm, Monday to Friday, including school holidays.

Find us on Facebook – /ESSchoolHealth

Who we are

Your School Health Team is led by registered, qualified nurses who have a specialist community public health degree. The team consists of community staff nurses, assistant practitioners, health improvement staff, school nurse assistants and administrators.

We work closely with a number of other services, including: Education, GPs, Children’s Integrated Therapy Services, paediatricians, the voluntary sector, youth services and East Sussex Children's Services.

All of our colleagues that work within schools and with children, families and young people have enhanced disclosure and barring checks (DBS); we are committed to promoting the healthy development, resilience and welfare of all children and young people.

What we do

Our focus is on promoting the health and wellbeing of all school-aged children, striving to deliver the very best care that we can. We do this by completing a health assessment with you and your child to identify the most appropriate intervention and potential outcome and we will work with you to achieve this.

Where we are unable to help, we will always signpost or refer you to a more suitable service. Every child deserves the best start in life; our aim is to make sure that nothing gets in the way of your child’s development, so that they can achieve their full potential.

We provide support and advice for a variety of health issues for primary and secondary-aged children and young people and will refer to specialist services when needed.

Primary school-age

For primary aged children we can support parents by offering either one off visits and advice or packages of care that can last up to six contacts dependent on the needs of the child.

• Eat well, Get active: This package is designed for primary-aged children of a normal weight that need assistance with diet, faddy eating and physical activity.
• Bladder and Bowel concerns: This package of care is designed for children and young people who have trouble with wetting or bowel issues.
• Healthy Lifestyles: This package of care is designed for children who have multiple difficulties, for example: Sleep, diet, physical activity, gadgets and screen time, puberty, hygiene and growing up.
• Sleep: This package of support is designed for children and young people who have trouble settling at night.
• Ready, Steady, Go our fun eight week healthy lifestyles programme primarily designed for children who have a BMI equal to or over the 91st centile and below the 98th centile aged 4 to 11 years old. Sessions are designed for children to attend with a parent/carer and include lifestyle advice and taking part in fun physical activity, challenges and games.

For secondary-aged young people

We will offer a health assessment and can tailor interventions that will support young people aged between 11 to 19 who wish to improve their lifestyle or health, and who have different concerns and factors that are affecting their life, for example exercise, bladder and bowels, hygiene or self-care, smoking, substance misuse or alcohol use, puberty, sex and relationships and c-cards.  However if you would prefer to speak to one of our nurses then you can attend our virtual drop in.

Need an appointment? Visit our Attend Anywhere waiting room.

We also offer a texting service that is available for parents of children aged 5 to 11 years and young people aged 11 to 19 years old. This service is completely confidential unless we feel that you or someone else is at risk in some way and you can text us on 07507 332 473. This service is available between 8.30am and 5pm, Monday to Friday.

You can find out more or refer to our services by contacting us using the contact details above or by using our online referral form.

Support for schools

We support education professionals to achieve best practice for learning and development through a whole school approach. We do this through providing training on asthma, diabetes, epilepsy and anaphylaxis, consultancy across a wide range of universal and specialist areas including individual health care plans and PSHE. We also provide care packages and personalised support for children and young people.

How do you use our service

Children, young people and families can access our service in a number of ways. Children must be between the ages of four and 18.

Young people can self-refer via any of our drop in clinics at secondary school, by contacting us through our confidential texting service 07507 332 473. Please see the drop in schedule for more information (due to COVID-19 we are only operating a drop-in service using our virtual platform, visit our Attend Anywhere waiting room. Parents and professionals are welcome to contact us using the details above or by completing our online referral form.

East Sussex healthy schools programme

The East Sussex healthy schools programme builds on previous evidence-based approaches developed locally and is supported by East Sussex Public Health and the East Sussex School Health Service.

The healthy schools programme brings together the following three components that support schools in taking a systematic approach to health and wellbeing:

• the school health check (helping you to achieve Healthy Schools Status)
• a new pupil survey for Year 6, Year 9 and post 16 students, my health, my school, and
• a new updated PSHE offer from the School Health Service.

The Healthy Schools programme supports schools to recognise and celebrate achievements in whole-school health improvement and provides a simple way to collate a range of evidence that will be useful for Ofsted inspection judgement areas.