Children's Emotional and Additional Health Needs - elearning for healthcare
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This programme is in partnership with...
  • Department of Health
  • Public Health England
  • School and Public Health Nurses Association
  • CPHVA

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 elearning 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 elearning 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 elearning 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 elearning 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.

  • Session 1

  • Session 2

  • Session 3

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.

  • Session 1

  • Session 2

  • Session 3

elearning resources

A number of resources have been developed to help support trainers in disseminating this elearning further. This includes documents summarising the key messages from the elearning programme and tutorial forms to enable trainers to highlight pre-reading and further reading resources available in the elearning 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

    Wendy Nicholson

    Lead Nurse - Children, Young People and Families, Public Health England
  • Sharon White

    Sharon White

    Clinical Lead, Professional Officer, School and Public Health Nurses Association (SAPHNA)
  • Obi Amadi

    Obi Amadi

    Lead Professional Officer, UNITE/CPHVA
  • Jill Beswick

    Jill Beswick

    Health Visiting Service Transformation Lead, NHS England
  • Wendi Murphy

    Wendi Murphy

    Independent Consultant
  • Angela Lewis

    Angela Lewis

    Independent Consultant, Public Health Nursing Practice
  • elfh-staff-Neha-Baj-learning-profile

    Neha Baj

    Senior Project Manager, HEE elearning 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 elfh Hub.

If you already have an account with elfh, then you can enrol on to the Children’s Emotional and Additional Health Needs programme by logging in to the elfh Hub, selecting My Account > Enrolment and selecting the programme. You can then access the programme immediately in the My elearning section.

Register >

To view the Children’s Emotional and Additional Health Needs programme, select the View button below. If you already have an account with elfh, you will also be able to login and enrol on the programme from the View button.

View >

Registering large numbers of users

If you are a HR, IT or Practice Manager and would like to register and enrol large numbers of staff within your organisation for access onto the Children’s Emotional and Additional Health Needs programme, please contact elfh directly.

Organisations wishing to use their own LMS

For HR departments wanting to know more about gaining access to courses using an existing Learning Management System please contact elfh directly to express interest.

More information

Please select the following link for more information on how to use the elfh Hub.

elfh is an NHS England Programme in partnership with the NHS and Professional Bodies