Black Country Asthma Friendly Schools is a partnership initiative between health and the local authority that encourages all schools to welcome children with asthma and put simple strategies in place to ensure they can fully participate in school life.
An Asthma Friendly School is one where children with asthma are safe and can fully participate in all elements of school life. By signing up, schools are committing to ensuring that all school staff know what to do if a child has an asthma attack.
What is an Asthma Friendly School?
An Asthma Friendly School is one that:
- Adopts and adheres to their local authority recommended asthma policy
- Has a named asthma lead/champion amongst its staff
- Maintains an up-to-date asthma register of the children in its care
- Ensures staff complete baseline asthma training and annual updates
- Ensures staff can recognise when a child is having an asthma attack and know what to do if this happens
- Ensures children always have easy access to their reliever/rescue (usually blue) inhaler
- Provides a school emergency inhaler and spacer device within the allowable legislation or ensures every child with asthma has a spare inhaler for emergency use stored safely on site.
How to become an Asthma Friendly School
- Appoint a staff member to lead on asthma
- Check Asthma Friendly Schools criteria
- Identify actions needed to meet all criteria
- Complete the online submission when all criteria are met
- Share the news with the school community when Asthma Friendly Status is awarded
- Display the Asthma Friendly School certificate in school.
How to apply
To apply for the Asthma Friendly School status, schools need to submit a self-assessment form. The form can be filled out online here.
All submissions will be reviewed by an approved reviewer and Asthma Friendly status will be awarded if all criteria are met. The school or setting will be informed of the outcome, sent a certificate and will be added to their local Asthma Friendly register. If criteria are not met the school or setting will be contacted and advised how to improve and resubmit.
For more information on Asthma Friendly Schools, email the NHS Black Country Integrated Care Board asthma team at cypasthma.
