Well-being nurse to assist youth, family

Western Sydney Local Health District’s (WSLHD) Youth Health team has placed six new Wellbeing and Health In-reach Nurse (WHIN) coordinators in high schools, including Granville South Performing Arts.
The nurses develop relationships with community-based services in their areas and liaise with their school’s well-being teachers and Learning Support Teams to provide wholistic care and support for the students and their families.
They provide students with health education across a wide range of pertinent topics including mental health, sexual health and drug abuse, and vaping, a topic of concern at the moment.
They also support students from the primary schools that feed into these high schools, such as Granville South Public.
Granville-based WHIN Janet Annor has more than 100 young people and family members in her care and said, “being a WHIN is fun and I love that no single day at work is the same”.
She has been a nurse in WSLHD for more than 20 years and was “drawn to the role to help empower youth”.
Granville South Public principal, Karen Macphail, applauded the initiative, saying Janet is “making such a phenomenal difference to the lives of some of our families”.
“I just wanted to say thank you. I don’t know where you got Janet from, but she is truly an absolute angel,” she said.
Graeme Pringle, WSLHD’s Youth Health Coordinator, is excited about the program as it allows students and their families in WSLHD to access a well-being nurse for their health needs.
“The program is another way we provide young people access to appropriate health services to ensure they are able to participate in their education,” he said.
The program started as a pilot in 2018 and is a partnership between NSW Health and the NSW Department of Education.