NICE guidance for schools on cutting alcohol use in children and young people calls for staff including school nurses to give one-to-one counselling to pupils thought to be drinking harmful amounts.

These staff should also lead education programmes aimed at children who have not yet started drinking, the guidance says.

It highlights underage drinking as a widespread problem — in 2006, 21 per cent of children aged 11–15 reported drinking alcohol in the past week. Over half — 55 per cent — had drunk at least one alcoholic drink in their lifetime.

Ros Godson, professional officer for school and public health at Unite/CPHVA, said the union backed the NICE guidance.

But she warned that many nurses employed in schools were not trained to offer the support it sets out. Three quarters of those working in schools are not fully qualified school nurses, she said. 'Three quarters are community staff nurses - you can't expect them to take on education,' Ms Godson said. 'And for children who have started to drink, you don't learn about behaviour change in standard nurse training. You only learn it in specialist practitioner training.'

She said community staff nurses could take top-up courses to enable them to carry out more of the work recommended in the NICE guidance. But she added: 'Someone has to pay for it.'

Professor Catherine Law, chair of the NICE public health interventions advisory committee, said: 'By incorporating alcohol advice into the national science and personal, social and health education (PHSE) curricula, through increasing knowledge of the potential damage alcohol can do physically, mentally and socially, we can help prevent young people from getting into trouble with alcohol.'

NICE

Comment below and tell us what you think