Type 1 diabetes

[jane.sheldon]

Hi everyone, I'm a newbie on here. I have some concerns regarding the conduct if a primary school. I have recently met someone who has a son with type 1 diabetes. He was diagnosed 18mths ago, his father has had no support from school and still no medically trained staff on site. He has made it aware to ofstead and still had no reply. Advice please

 

[SB2015]

For a child with a long term condition any school in England (possibly others as well but not sure of the rules) should have in place a Care Plan. For a child with T1, this needs to include what to do if the child has a hypo, and also when to contact parent(s) if the child’s levels go high.

It is not necessary to have a medical person on site, but there should be at least two staff (teachers, teaching assistants, school nurse, ...) who are trained to support the child in managing their condition. Children deal with it in very different ways and this will also depend on what technology they are using.

This link will take you to the information page on the Diabetes Uk website about what you can expect of the school. https://www.diabetes.org.uk/guide-to-diabetes/your-child-and-diabetes/schools
I hope that helps.

 

[jane.sheldon]

Thank you very much for your reply. I will take a look at the link. That's again

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Welcome to the forum @jane.sheldon

I’m tagging @Bronco Billy @Thebearcametoo and @Sally71 in to this thread as they have lots of experience and can offer you their thoughts and advice.

Diabetes UK have recently run their ‘Make the Grade’ campaign, which had resources for schools wanting to offer better support for children with diabetes.

 

[jane.sheldon]

The school in question have made no effort to support this child. How can we make the school do what they should be doing? Ofstead have been contacted as they were visiting the school at the time. They were not even aware of a diabetic/Autistic child in the school as he was kept out of the way. 18mths down the line and haven't even met the SENCO! It really makes me angry to see a family suffer due to this! Where can we go with this, any ideas?

 

[Thebearcametoo]

My kids are home educated so we don’t have to deal with school but I know our nurse regularly does school visits to educate. In terms of practicalities someone (often more than one person) in the school would be shown by the DSN (diabetes specialist nurse) how to assist or administer injections and enter carb counts etc. Here the DSN would support the school for the initial period after diagnosis. This wouldn’t necessarily be the SENCO or someone with medical training just a staff member who has been shown the specifics. What currently happens with the child getting his insulin whilst at school? The diabetes team should have the data to show if his diabetes is being poorly managed during the school day and if there are issues they should be part of any solution.

I’m aware though that we only have third hand info and it may be that the right things are in place but communication had broken down or other factors are in play. The info that SB linked to has good outlines for both parents and schools and gives a good checklist of what is good practice and who has responsibilities at each stage.

 

[Sally71]

They don’t need to get the SENCO involved, but they do need to have a care plan, this can be done by the parent with or without help from the DSN (having a DSN there might add some weight, ours helped to set up the initial one but then after that any amendments I just did myself and let the DSN know). When my daughter was at primary school, each new school year I would go and see the new teacher, go through the care plan with them and not move from my seat until I was happy that they had understood at least the basics, i.e. mealtime procedure and how to detect and deal with a hypo. We had a few minor blips along the way, with untrained teachers sticking their noses in and spoiling parties, but mostly everything went ok. Secondary school for us is much better, the one daughter is at now has got it nailed, sadly not all schools are the same

The link that SB2015 provided is very interesting! Presumably the child's parents have tried to go through it all with the class teacher, so the next step would be with the head teacher. I'd print out all the legal stuff from the above link and take it to the meeting, and ask to see a copy of the school's medical conditions policy. With any luck that might be enough for them to see that it isn’t just something that can be swept under the carpet. “Safeguarding” is a big buzzword in schools at the moment, if they aren't looking after a child's medical condition properly then they aren’t keeping the child safe. And it's a legal requirement now that they must have members of staff trained up to do whatever is necessary (doesn’t have to be the class teacher though).

If that still doesn't work then I guess it's a case of working up the complaints procedure, so governors and then maybe legal action? Can the diabetes hospital team maybe get involved to add a bit of weight to it, so that the school staff can see that they aren't just dealing with a neurotic parent?

Don't know if any of that helps, it's all I can think of at the moment. Good luck, unfortunately it seems that some schools just don’t want to listen when it comes to these things, so i hope it can be sorted, otherwise I’d be thinking about moving the child to another school to keep them safe

 

[jane.sheldon]

Thank you all for your replies. I will have a good read through this evening. Tganjs again

 

[Bronco Billy]

Hi Jane

First of all, please accept my apologies for not replying until now. Life has been a bit mad this week and I’ve only just seen this.

The good news is that there is a lot that can be done. Most of what I’m about to say is based on the statutory guidance for schools who have pupils with medical conditions. You can find it here It contains information on what the school should be doing, so any levels of care that are missing will be addressed in this document. The school should be shown this as most of the information it contains is what they are obliged to do.

I’m surprised that no staff have been trained. Usually, the DSNs contact the school to arrange training. I would suggest the family contact the DSN in the first instance. The school must have a sufficient number of staff trained in diabetes to cover the pupil’s needs and staff absences. In my experience, most schools struggle with care simply because they don’t know what support to give or what they should be doing. Usually, when they receive help with this, situations change for the better. For this and other reasons, the DSNs need to arrange training ASAP.

Basic levels of support that the school should give the child are; testing and injecting in class if the pupil wants this, or providing a private area to do so if not, supervision for testing and injecting, sufficient numbers of trained staff, a care plan written in collaboration with the family, the school and the DSN, not relying on the parents to come into the school to provide care and not excluding the pupil from activities and trips.

Ofsted wouldn’t necessarily be aware that the school has a pupil with type 1. They don’t really need to be.

It is possible that the school is breaching its own medical conditions policy. If you’d like to PM me the name of the school, I’ll have a look at the website and check. You can do this using the envelope tab at the top of the screen. Feel free to raise specific issues with me as well. The situation can and will change!

 

[jane.sheldon]

Hi Bronco, thank you for your reply. I have looked at the school policy previously, as far as I can see they are in breach. I will speak to the family in question and gain alittke more info before I PM you. Thanks again. Jane