Students who need health care support at school must have a management and emergency response plan.
Standardised management and emergency response plans are available for common health care needs:
- Administration of medication (form 3)
- Severe allergy or anaphylaxis (form 4)
- Mild and moderate allergies (form 5)
- Diabetes, refer to the Diabetes WA website
- Seizures (form 7)
- Asthma (form 8)
- Personal care activities (form 9)
Use a Generic health care plan (form 2)] for all other health care needs.
Control of Communicable Diseases
Information provided by Government of Western Australia, Department of Health. Updated January 2023.
Communicable disease guidelines
School staff have a key role in preventing the transmission of diseases in the school environment.
While it is often difficult to prevent the transmission of common respiratory (colds/flu) and gastroenteritis infections that occur, every effort should be made to minimise the spread of infection by encouraging:
- staff and children at school to stay at home in the early stages of illness as at this stage they can be infectious and shed the virus, bacteria or parasite through coughing, sneezing, contaminating surfaces and personal contact
- school staff and students who are ill should not return to work/school until they are symptom free if they have a cold or flu and for at least 24 hours if they have had gastroenteritis
- staff and children at school who have had gastroenteritis should not return to work until they are symptom free for at least 48 hours
- parents to seek medical advice if their child has ongoing symptoms of illness.
An outline of preventative strategies for preventing transmission of disease and recommendations for cleaning the environment can be obtained from Staying Healthy in Child Care (external site), a government publication that provides comprehensive information about the management of a range of common childhood diseases www.nhmrc.gov.au
School staff should play a role in encouraging parents to ensure that their child’s immunisation is up to date; they should request a copy of the child’s ACIR immunisation statement to update their centre register/database for reference in times such as infectious disease outbreak.
Many of the childhood infectious diseases require student/staff to be excluded from school for a recommended period of time; if they are unable to provide evidence of immunisation against specific diseases that are known to be highly transmissible they will be excluded.