Every Child Matters - Children with Diabetes

support worker will not be liable if something goes wrong and a member ofthe school staff has acted in good faith.New regimensThese newer regimens are more complex and require decisions to be madebased on current blood glucose values, consideration of the food intake andwhether or not exercise is planned. There are other factors, which alsoinfluence the blood glucose levels, such as illness and hormone levels, as aresult there is always a slight variation in the insulin needs each day. Mostparents, along with their diabetes team and school will have written up a careplan. It is not practical to be able to include every situation that will arise, sothe parents usually remain in close contact with the school. However someschools still struggle to cope with dealing with very young children withdiabetes. There are disagreements with the school about the care that childrenneed and what the school can offer. Even when a child is not requiring insulininjections to be taken at school, the care is sometimes woefully short of thatneeded. Sometimes the child’s DSN has not helped the situation by leadingthe schools to think that diabetes care is too simple and requires no more thatlooking at a child to see if they are ok and saying that most children canrecognise a hypo and will be able to treat it themselves. There are of coursemany very dedicated DSN’s who are able to help the teachers to understandwhat is needed. Many of the youngest children with diabetes require extrahelp above and beyond that which a school would have normally have beenexpected to do in the past with the older insulin regimens. Many parents arefinding accessing this extra help impossible. It appears to some parents, thatsome local authorities seem to deliberately refuse children an assessment andprovision of help, to which the children are legally entitled, knowing that onlyfew parents will take them to a tribunal. This applies to children with otherdisabilities besides diabetes! The parents and the school are often placed inan extremely uncomfortable position as the struggle goes on with the LEA.Parents, who are worn down from dealing with their child’s condition and thelack of support from the schools, sometimes give up. Some parents haveremoved their child from school altogether because of the safety issues andthese weren’t always very young children.Few chronic conditions require as much vigilance as diabetes3.3 Information provided to schools is outdatedand not always helpfulSchools are still being given outdated information and consequently, schoolsare expecting too much from very young children. Some of Diabetes UK’sadvice to schools only seems relevant to children using the older insulinregimens and not for very young children using modern insulin regimens orinsulin pumps, who are unable to do any of the diabetes care themselves.Little information is given in the leaflet Children with Diabetes at Schoolabout going to see the school months before the child even starts school, tomake sure that there are provisions in place to give the necessary support.There is no mention of being trained to give life saving glucagon in the eventof a severe hypo or unconsciousness or of the school administering insulin orhelping with blood tests if a child is too young carry out these things on theirown. There is no mention of older children who may also have poor hypo11