09/02/2026
We would like to introduce the newest members of the School Health Team! We have plans to get the babysitting course up and running again very shortly, with our first round being held at Stromness Academy, targeted at S3-6 pupils.
A little bit of back story for anyone interested, from our School Nurse, Thisbe Sinclair:
The babysitting course was historically part of the School Health Teams role in Orkney, I completed this myself as a pupil at Stromness Academy. It is what actually sparked my interest in working with children, and becoming a nurse. So many of you may remember the course, or may have even completed it yourself, and hopefully share fond memories of it.
However, when the School Nursing pathway was introduced in 2016, it was deemed the babysitting course no longer sat within our remit. If you've followed along with the Orkney School Health Teams journey, you'll see that we expand upon the pathway to fit the needs of children and young people. Given we don't have as many services in Orkney as mainland Scotland, we are keen to continue to develop what we offer.
When the opportunity arose for me to come up with an area of development through Queen's Nursing Institute Scotland, I jumped at this. I was fortunate enough to have been chosen, and completed the Queen's Nursing Program, who supported the idea of getting the babysitting course up and running again. From this, I applied for funding from the RCN Foundation. You'll have maybe seen from a previous post that we were successful, and I had the opportunity to attend the RCN headquarters in London and present the babysitting course. We have also had support from NHS Orkney in getting here.
Our Trainee School Nurse, Hannah, was previously part of the running of the course when she was in her Support Worker role within the team. She has developed the course material to make it more relevant to young people today. Despite all the hard work the team has done to get us here today, we are very excited about getting the course up and running again very soon. Although our first round will be at Stromness Academy, we hope this will be well-received, and we are keen to get this going again in KGS and our Junior Highs too!
