Q. What has happened to the nit nurses who used
to be a feature of schools when I was a girl? As anyone with children at school will testify, the head lice problem seems to be out of control. I do not wish to keep polluting my children’s heads with dangerous chemicals, only for them to be reinfested a few days later by children whose parents have not bothered, now that there are no nit nurses to shame them into doing so.
S.R., Wantage A. Nit nurses began to be phased out after 1974 when schools realised that the wording of health authority regulations about head inspections meant that these inspections could legally have constituted an ‘assault’ and compensationseekers could pretend to have been traumatised by them. The consequence has been the current plague. Some parents claim that a natural method of defeating the lice is to coat the hair in mayonnaise and wrap the head in clingfilm or a bath hat for three hours. The lice will be suffocated. Rinse the muck off, using a rinse of half water, half vinegar (dissolves the glue that helps them to attach to the hair shaft). Then comb the corpses out.
Previous page