About the Children's Emotional and Additional Health Needs programme
The Children’s Emotional and Additional Health Needs programme provides Continuing Professional Development (CPD) content comprising six e-learning sessions, as both a resource pack for face-to-face training and as a learning resource, for Health Visitors and School Nurses. It focusses on early and co-ordinated support for children with emotional health and wellbeing issues, and additional or complex health needs.
The sessions provide an overview of common issues for children with complex/additional health needs and emotional health and wellbeing concerns. This enhanced learning will equip teams with the essential skills to deliver high-quality services and early help and support in these specialist areas.
The e-learning materials have been developed by staff who have a nursing qualification and expertise in either health visiting or school nursing. The sessions have been tested with a number of Health Visitors and School Nurses, alongside a range of stakeholders and relevant networks. The pilots for the face-to-face training element include participants from School Nursing and Health Visiting. A broad geographical spread of participants has been sought.
The first module is focused on the role of Health Visitors and School Nurses in supporting children and young people living with complex needs and include those with long-term medical conditions, life-limiting illnesses, autism, hearing and visual impairments, cerebral palsy and special educational needs. The second module is focused on the role of the Health Visitor and School Nurse in understanding the risk factors of and promoting positive emotional health and wellbeing. It also considers more specific mental health and illnesses. Up-to-date resources are included to support learners, providing opportunities for further research and an improved knowledge base.
Introduction to the programme
More information
As a result of the training delivered, Health Visitors and School Nurses are enabled to pass on the training (including any materials where relevant) to colleagues. The training ensures that Health Visitors and School Nurses are adequately prepared and have an appropriate level of understanding to support peers undertaking the training themselves. This will be tested through self and tutor assessment and evaluation during and after the training.
In summary, this programme provides a curriculum with high-quality training materials. The identification of key challenges for wider rollout of training, and possible mitigating actions for these challenges will be discussed and agreed by the project team and reported back to Department of Health and Public Health England.
The e-learning package discusses the following themes:
- Assessment of the child/young person
- Training for non-clinical staff in awareness of the clinical needs of the child
- Identifying needs of the child and family
- Co-ordination of tailored packages of support
- Negotiation skills and partnership working
- Clinical skills
- Adapting the learning or home environment
- Adaptive play and behaviour techniques
- Early identification and providing support in and out of schools, nurseries and children’s centres
The film below illustrates a ‘Champions day’ which took place for trainers of Health Visitors and School Nurses, where the vision for the e-learning programme was outlined in detail.
Champions day
Module 1
Module 1 provides an overview of complex and additional needs. It considers common issues relating to children and young people with additional or complex needs and comprises three sessions.
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Session 1
Session 1
Physical Health including long term conditions and life limiting illnesses.
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Session 2
Session 2
Physical Disability including cerebral palsy, hearing or sight impairment.
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Session 3
Session 3
Special educational needs including learning disability and autistic spectrum disorder.
Module 2
Module 2 provides an overview of common topics related to children and young people’s emotional health and wellbeing and comprises three sessions.
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Session 1
Session 1
Understanding the emotional health and wellbeing of children and young people.
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Session 2
Session 2
Risk factors and early warning signs to avoid crisis.
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Session 3
Session 3
Mental health and mental illness in children and young people.
e-learning resources
A number of resources have been developed to help support trainers in disseminating this e-learning further. This includes documents summarising the key messages from the e-learning programme and tutorial forms to enable trainers to highlight pre-reading and further reading resources available in the e-learning programme. These resources can be downloaded from this link.
The film below explores the experiences of Lynne Watson, a Health Visitor, whose son has had complex physical needs. We would encourage the use of this film as part of training materials for Health Visitors and School Nurses.
Meet the team
Wendy Nicholson
Lead Nurse - Children, Young People and Families, Public Health England
Sharon White
Clinical Lead, Professional Officer, School and Public Health Nurses Association (SAPHNA)
Obi Amadi
Lead Professional Officer, UNITE/CPHVA
Jill Beswick
Health Visiting Service Transformation Lead, NHS England
Wendi Murphy
Independent Consultant
Angela Lewis
Independent Consultant, Public Health Nursing Practice
Neha Baj
Senior Project Manager, HEE e-Learning for Healthcare
How to access
Available to all
The Children’s Emotional and Additional Health Needs programme is freely available to access here.
Please note your progress and completion of sessions will not be recorded and you will not be able to generate a record of completion. If you require evidence of learning, please register and then log in to access this programme on the e-LfH Hub.
If you already have an account with e-LfH, then you can enrol on to the Children’s Emotional and Additional Health Needs programme by logging in to the e-LfH Hub, selecting My Account > Enrolment and selecting the programme. You can then access the programme immediately in the My e-Learning section.
NHS healthcare staff in England
The Children’s Emotional and Additional Health Needs programme is also available to NHS healthcare staff via the Electronic Staff Record (ESR). Accessing this e-Learning via ESR means that your completions will transfer with you throughout your NHS career.
Further details are available here.