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. Please complete this form to register your interest, and a local specialist nurse will be incontact in due course.

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

Please use these exemplar policies to begin your work towards Asthma Friendly Schools Accreditation

Primary Schools

Policy - pdf version

Policy - word version

Secondary Schools

Policy - pdf version

Policy - word version

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.

Thank you to all the schools who have got involved with Asthma Friendly Schools.

Congratulations to the schools who have acreditation:

Wath Central Primary School, Rotherham

Sandringham Primary, Doncaster

Astrea Academy Woodfields, Doncaster

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"We are delighted to have received this accreditation in recognition of Sandringham Primary School's ongoing commitment to providing the best possible care for our pupils. Working towards the accreditation of being an Asthma Friendly school has enabled us to access high-quality training for staff and to benefit from the expertise of our health colleagues"

Mr Metcalfe, Sandringham Primary

“One of the things we want to do here at Astrea Academy Woodfields is to make children feel safe and welcome. To do that, they need to feel well and able to engage with education in the same way as all of the scholars in our school and as someone with a history of asthma as well, I know that can sometimes be difficult.

The Asthma Friendly Accreditation process was really easy thanks to the support of our local NHS colleagues and the training was really informative and supported all of our staff to be in the best position to deliver the new policies that we have put in place.

It's going to make a big difference for these young people who will now feel safer, which we hope will enable them to succeed and thrive during their time in school.”

David Scales, Astrea Academy Woodfields

More coming soon...