Every Child Matters - Children with Diabetes

A Series of Unfortunate Events4.1 Examples of negative experiences at school astold by parents or students.Paragraphs highlighted in blue are a few of the many incidents which have beenreported since first report was published in 2007. *Some names have beenchanged.♦Philip’s school was a nightmare, the headmaster was harsh. He felt Philipshould manage his own diabetes (Philip was just 8 years old and had onlybeen diagnosed for 12 months.) The head said his learning difficulties werean excuse for laziness and he should take responsibility for his own medicalcondition and his education. In the end I was so drained with fighting theschool and my son was depressed and always crying. So I withdrew him fromschool for 6 months to reassure him that no one was going to bully him, therehad been other issues, he was having frequent hypos at the end of the schoolday due to lack of support. Philip’s teacher told me that he was notbehaving in the correct manner and had disturbed her teaching, so he wasbanned from using the computer “to make him think about how he shouldbehave”!!!! The school told me that another child in the school was diabeticand that she was never a problem to them, suggesting that my son was aproblem. They received funding for my son but never used it for him.Philip is now at a new school and is doing well reading and writing, I amallowed to join him on school trips and a member of staff is now trained togive lunchtime injections. The school understand how blood glucose levelsmight affect behaviour and ability to concentrate and they accommodate hisneeds.♦Jack was told by the receptionist to go and do his injections and blood testin the toilets!! Last year he was barred from going on a school trip because theschool said that none of the teachers had enough knowledge to look after him♦The school that Tim was supposed to be going to, (after attending the linkedpre-school) refused to do any care for him at all! The absolute most thatthey would do, they said, was to call an ambulance if he wasunconscious. We decided to change school. Not everyone has the choice.We are very happy with the new school.♦Teachers seemed to think that if I had hypos that it was because I wasn’tlooking after myself properly and that if my blood sugar was high it wasbecause I had eaten sweets. Submitted by a young person♦We have struggled with Ryan's school since he started, not wanting to takean active role in his diabetes. If Ryan looks pale/ill or says his tummy ishurting the school is straight on the phone asking me to come and take himhome, I work for my husband in the office, but if I had a 'proper job' I think Iwould of been sacked by now the amount of time off I have had.17