How to organise a Nitbuster Day

Organising a Nitbusters Day in your school requires some paperwork, namely, consent forms from parents, information to parents and volunteers, and follow-up information on treatment options.

This website provides standard forms that your school can download and reproduce and/or edit for your school.

The six sheets of paperwork are:

• The information sheet How to Organise a Nitbusting Day containing the information at the bottom of this web page should be handed to parent volunteers. It contains information on the items they need to run the day, some hints and ideas about nitbusting, and answers to common questions
• The Parent Information Sheet should be sent to parents and guardians in the school. This sheet provides information on what the program is, how it works, and a request that their child participate.
• The Parent Consent Forms should be sent out some days later. Children should not participate in a Nitbusting Day unless they have their parent's consent.
• The Take Home Note should be photocopied and ready to be completed and handed to each child after they are screened.
• Following the Nitbusting Day, the information sheets from James Cook University and a factsheet provide a very comprehensive summary of treating head lice and should be sent home to every family in the school.

Nitbusters forms are availiable in a range of community languages from the NSW Department of Education and Training web site in the Translated Documents section, under Head Lice.

To organise your Nitbusting Day:

• Arrange for class teachers to help with the paperwork on the day by checking their consent forms against class lists marking the lists with known infestations.
• Get the school to provide the conditioner, gloves, and good head lice combs.
  Good head lice combs are only available from selected chemists. Try to avoid ones that tear the hair or have too wide a spacing between tines. Some very good combs are available over the Internet. You may be able to get a discount for a bulk purchase. 
• Purchase cheap white hair conditioner. Several brands have bottles of over a litre at under $2. You will need about 10 bottles for 200 kids.
• Purchase some kitchen rolls of paper, again a cheap brand, to wipe the combs onto between each combing. You need a lot of this paper, several rolls per volunteer.
• Provide each volunteer with disposable rubber gloves. While it is not necessary to use them, some volunteers prefer them and enough should be available for each child.
• See if you can get a local supermarket to sponsor your school's Nitbusting Day. Acknowledgement of this support ca be provided in your school newsletter. It is worth investigating the possibilities.
• If the school has a microscope, it's worthwhile to set it up so the kids can inspect the critters!
• The idea of Nitbusters is to encourage as many parents as possible to understand how to treat kids hair simply. Try encouraging schools in your area to come on the day to learn how to nitbust. The idea is for parent groups to be able to go back to their schools with the information and confidence to run their own Nitbusting Days every term or so.