South Yorkshire Asthma Friendly Schools

Asthma is the most common long-term medical condition in children in the UK, with around 1 in 11 children and young people living with asthma. The UK has one of the highest prevalence, emergency admission and death rates for childhood asthma in Europe. Outcomes are worse for children and young people living in the most deprived areas. NHS England and NHS Improvement’s ambition is to reduce avoidable harm to children and young people from asthma and improve their quality of life.

NHS England » National bundle of care for children and young people with asthma

Schools and education partners across South Yorkshire are a significant part of achieving this ambition and form part of NHSE/I ‘National bundle of care for children and young people with asthma’. This work across South Yorkshire is delivered through the South Yorkshire Children and Young People’s Alliance.

The South Yorkshire Asthma Friendly Schools Initiative aims to improve the care of pupils with asthma by raising awareness through information, training and support for school staff as well as pupils, parents and carers. The initiative builds on the work already undertaken across South Yorkshire by 0-19 Services and Paediatric Respiratory teams over many years.

The Asthma Friendly Schools initiative was recently launched as a pilot in 8 primary and secondary schools in South Yorkshire.

The benefits of becoming an Asthma Friendly School are:

• Improved asthma awareness and management in schools

• Improved support to pupils with asthma encouraging an inclusive environment

• Additional support with the health, safety and wellbeing of pupils

• Ensures the school are implementing current and best practice asthma management strategies

• Enables the school to promote its self-evaluated status to ensure that the community is aware of the school's commitment to asthma friendly strategies

• All staff in school to be trained in Asthma Awareness 

• Each school to have an Asthma Policy 

• Each school to have an Asthma register 

• A consistent approach to where and how inhalers are stored in the school 

• A notification system of when inhalers are due to expire 

• Each school to have a spare emergency inhaler and spacer 

• A process in place of when to escalate cases to a health professional and/or parents/carers 

1. Start to work through the key objectives (listed above) using the below documents to support you achieving the objectives

2. If needed, contact scn-tr.cypalliance@nhs.net and we will connect you with a health professional in your area.

Once your school has achieved the objectives above, you will be presented with our Asthma Friendly Schools Certificate. 

It is important to start the conversation about asthma care in your school setting. 

We look forward to your school joining many others and becoming Asthma Friendly.

We are also keen to collect case studies of schools who have become Asthma Friendly and what impact this may have had on pupils, parents and carers, staff members or the school community. Please contact us at scn-tr.cypalliance@nhs.net  for information or further guidance.

Check out our resources on Asthma in school here.