HEHTS

The Hospital Education and Home Tuition Service (HEHTS) is part of Glasgow City Council's Education Service. It is a combined service whose function is to support the education of children and young people who are unable to attend school for reasons of ill health. Staff are based in four units, the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Yorkhill the Department of Child and Family Psychiatry, the Adolescent Psychiatric Ward in Garnavillo Royal Hospital and the Douglas Inch Centre which provides education for adolescents with attendance and truancy problems. In addition, our service offers home tuition to pupils who have been discharged from hospital and who are expected to be at home for some time before returning to school, as well as outreach support to pupils of school age who are admitted to adult hospitals. HEHTS has a staff of 25 teachers covering primary and secondary subjects. In a typical week we will work with between 40 to 50 pupils across primary and secondary stages. While a proportion of these are new patients we also work with 'recurring' patients, some of them throughout their school careers.

Our policy is to minimise disruption to educational progress as much as possible by offering a programme that reflects the work being undertaken in the pupils' own schools. The key to this is good communications and liaison with colleagues in schools. At primary level this normally initially involves the Head Teacher and thereafter takes place directly between the hospital teacher and the class teacher. At secondary level, where more teachers are involved both in the hospital and the school, the communication process is somewhat more complex and requires greater organisation. This should be a two way process with useful and relevant information being passed both from school to the hospital and vice versa.

Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Yorkhill

Yorkhill is the second largest children's hospital in the United Kingdom (see Picture 1 on previous page) and children and young people are admitted there from across Scotland and beyond with a range of conditions. Our staff normally works with all pupils whose admissions are long enough to make a start, around a week. We begin as early as is compatible with children's health and we endeavour to offer a full programme in our classrooms or at the bedside (see Picture 4). However, in the case of pupils with long term and recurring conditions we potentially support their education throughout their school careers and we seek to become full partners with their schools, not only in supporting and providing education but also in planning and assessing progress. A number of the pupils we work with in this category are from Ashcraig School in Glasgow. Our staff therefore has particularly close relationships with Ashcraig's staff, involving joint planning and assessment.

Within Yorkhill there is currently detailed discussion on planning more appropriate provision for adolescents. There is a growing recognition that the needs of adolescents in hospital are significantly different from those of children or adults. While Yorkhill is a children's hospital there are many young people whose long-term treatment continues to be organised there before being transferred to adult hospitals. The planning for this transition is complex and the views of young people and professionals have been identified through a consultative exercise involving local schools including Ashcraig. A group of staff from Yorkhill has recently been granted an NHS scholarship to travel to Australia to investigate developments there in adolescent provision and this will include members of HEHTS teaching staff. As a result of this exercise we are confident that education will play a central role in future planning and that the benefits of education to the physical and mental well-being of children and young people will be recognised.

Investing time in setting up effective liaison systems

Through the years the Hospital Education Team has linked with Ashcraig School to try and build up liaison. Ashcraig teachers' and managements' visits to the Hospital have proved invaluable and the process has been reciprocated by HEHTS staff visiting Ashcraig. A system has been set up to allow quick contact and the transfer of necessary teaching and learning materials between school and the hospital. The hospital staff already has copies of the school's 5 - 14 curriculum packs and a selection of some of the books regularly used by the pupils, including a copy of our reading improvement scheme to ensure that some support for learning initiatives can be continued. Daily faxes are sent to the liaison assistant head teacher who responds by returning relevant information by fax and organising work from Ashcraig teachers to be handed in to the hospital within a day or two. Perhaps we are still a little in the Dark Ages with this procedure, but it works! However, we have a direct link set up with the Modern Languages department whose teachers email the appropriate member of HEHTS staff and vice versa (see Picture 5). This has proved to be a very successful so in-house staff development looms in the near future! The purpose of investing so much time and energy into developing these links is to support learning and teaching and to ensure that the experience for students is positive and runs smoothly. To this end students' views are regularly canvassed and a selection of their comments can be read in the column to the right.

There is the occasional pupil who suggests that they are unaware of what work he or she needs to do. The system in place means a check can be kept on the reality of the situation. Although some pupils are quite happy to 'skive', most admit to appreciating the educational input. Others need some support to see the benefits!