NHS potty training coaches for Covid babies
Surge in demand for nurses in schools to deal with child development issues caused by lockdown
NHS nurses are being deployed to toilet train “lockdown babies” starting their first term of school this month, The Telegraph can reveal.
Specialist nurses are being drafted into schools and undergoing extra training sessions to meet a surge in demand for pandemic-related development issues.
It comes after a damning report out this week revealed that children born during the peak of the Covid pandemic would struggle at school for the next decade.
Tim Oates, the director of research at Cambridge University Press and Assessment and report author, said: “Staff in primary schools are reporting very serious problems of arrested language development, lack of toilet training, anxiety in being in social spaces, and depressed executive function.”
Children born in the first lockdown started primary school this month but experts say they have been failed by a “baby-blind spot” in the Covid recovery, which means record numbers are not toilet trained, have difficulty communicating and are not equipped to start school.
Local NHS services have had to deal with the fallout by putting on “bedwetting workshops” and giving parents and their children toilet training lessons at schools. It is estimated that about one in four children starting school are not toilet trained.
Medway Community Healthcare, in Kent, said its “school nurses are delivering ‘healthy bladder and bowel’ workshops for parents in many local schools” this term, inviting those interested to speak to their child’s school.
In Walsall, the NHS has arranged “bedwetting workshops” for parents whose children are late to learn bladder control. Similar classes are being put on at places including Batley and Birstall, Leeds, Warrington, Stockton-on-Tees, and a number of London boroughs.
Teachers are spending almost half of their teaching time addressing the issues of children who are not “school ready”, according to one survey, which has a knock-on impact on other children’s learning.
Charities have also been left to address the crisis. The Institute of Health Visiting (iHV), a centre of excellence for specialist nurses called health visitors, which care for children from birth to age five, has had to put on extra workshops for NHS staff. The extra classes are designed to better equip the nurses for the challenge facing Covid babies and focus on children with toilet issues, who are fussy eaters, or have emotional or social development issues.
Its annual survey revealed half of health visitors were seeing an increase in child development problems. Phillipa Bishop, director of learning and development at iHV, said: “The children who are starting school this autumn are the ‘Covid-babies’ who entered the world at the start of the pandemic and missed out on all the usual support services during their formative earliest years.
“Unlike school-age children, there was no Covid recovery plan for our youngest citizens whose needs have been repeatedly ignored by policymakers, despite numerous calls to address the ‘baby blind spot’.”
She said the “Spotlight Learn workshops” would help ensure teams identify and support families in areas “problematic for children entering school”.
Alison Morton, the chief executive at the iHV said it was “not a surprise” so many children had fallen behind.
“The travesty is that the current situation was both predictable and preventable. It is vital that the new government lives up to its promise to prioritise child health and this must include urgent action to address the needs of babies and young children.”
A survey by charity Kindred found that one in four new starters are not toilet trained, while two in five are unable to listen and respond to basic instructions or dress independently. Almost half cannot sit still.
A separate report by Speech and Language UK found one in five children was struggling with talking or understanding words.
Another charity, ERIC, which specialises in children’s bowel and bladder health, has this summer run an emergency campaign to get children toilet trained before they start school.
‘Unlike school-age children, there was no Covid recovery plan for our youngest citizens’