Mayflower primary school - nappy changing facilities for school aged children

There are children who due to early intervention a d better socialisation and education WOULD have been severely disabled due to institutionalisation who now aren't. They are SEN instead. They function more effectively. The proportion of kids with disabilities hasn't changed, if anything the type of disability and accepted lives of children has changed. There are statistics to back this up, I'll have a look for them. And both my children were dry and clean day and night shortly after turning 2, my eldest has SEN but that 1 aspect worked out (wiping is a different matter but we manage that)

Children who would have been 'written off ' and institutionalised in the 80s now have early intervention and attend mainstream school. My aunt who had short stature, hypermobility, what would now be diagnosed as autism and brittle asthma was never in mainstream school, she attended a specialist unit and a day centre after that until she died of a cardiac arrest at 37. Yet she was able to communicate, could walk by herself the half mile from my granny's house to ours, could take us kids out to the garden and supervise us playing etc and would definitely have been mainstream schooled now, and not considered severely disabled

Yes the Health Visitors had a clinic in our town and you could drop in any time up until starting school. Same with Surestart. They didn't 'get involved' with toilet training but Surestart in particular ran toddler groups and preschool sessions several times a week. There was always a health visitor or early years practitioner there who you could ask any questions of. They ran drop in sessions on weaning, healthy eating and toilet training etc...often picked up or advised on issues and worries you may have. They also had a sensory room which you could book free of charge too. Living a long way from my own family at the time they were invaluable. A really great support and well used by everyone. Also served as a base for newborn check up and feeding support / drop ins (breastfeeding and bottle feeding). Absolutely brilliant resource.

He has 2-1. He has other physical needs too.

@Barnbrack
I think you are confusing two different issues here.
There have always been severely disabled children who were unable to toilet train. They might have been in seen less or almost never in mainstream schools up until a relatively short time ago, but there hasn’t been an increase in severe disability.
The rise in diagnosis of neurodiversity and SEN, doesn’t mean that the proportion of those children who are incapable of toilet training before school age has risen. Why would it?

I have already posted about this but in countries where toilet training is socially expected by 3, this is what happens, even if these children receive diagnosis further along the line, that doesn’t stop them from being toilet trained before starting nursery.

I know this because I have had 20+ years working in a county where there is free nursery school from 3-6 and there are no separate schools for children with disabilities.
In an intake of say 50 3 year olds there may be 1 or 2 who come with nappies because they have a clear disability which, even if not diagnosed officially is on the pathway and has been already monitored by a paediatrician. There will be other children who receive a diagnosis of SEN during their time at nursery, but they still start out of nappies at 3!

I say this knowing all too well about severe disability and how for some children this will never be possible. It however has nothing to do with the increase in children coming to school in nappies.

In the schools here there are wet rooms fitted with baths and shower and spaces to change mainly children with disabilities, but there are official roles within the school system where bathing and cleaning is required, the same as when children are physically sick etc.

Sorry to hear that. I don’t think that the OP is referring to children like your son tbh. I am assuming she means that there are otherwise capable children who aren’t being taught how to use a toilet. I would imagine that your son’s situation is quite rare. A primary school can likely facilitate one disabled student in the classroom. But when there are 5-6 in a classroom who need changing it would be chaos. I imagine your son has 1-1 TA. Some of us are commenting more on the fact that it seems to be prevalent amongst non SEN or disabled children.

My son was potty trained before starting school but suddenly became disabled at 8 and is now bowel incontinent. No amount of training will ever make his bowel work correctly again.

Schools should be inclusive of diasabled children. Plenty of children with physcial disabilities don't have learning difficulties or cognitive impairment and can do just fine in mainstream school with the right support.

Yea, but 'With the right support' is the sticking point though here.

Expecting individual teachers to facilitate high levels of attainment for each child in a class of 30, whilst simultaneously supporting pupils with complex needs and toilet training/changing others without additional support is what is increasingly happening. The 'right support' just isn't happening due to lack of funding
and that is not the fault of teachers.

We have more children with SEND than ever in my school this year and we are facing mass redundancies as we can't afford to pay the raised NI contributions, pay rises and increased COL costs. Meanwhile the building is literally falling down around us.

They are surprised because until the child appeared on their class list they wouldn't have considered it being a necessity.

There are no 7-11 year olds, with no SEND, in nappies because they have lazy parents. There are DEFINITELY no children that age allowing a teacher to give them intimate care with no SEND needs.

My son was potty trained at just past 2, dry and clean day and night. He is asn. My sister's boy is 5 weeks younger, autistic and trained a few months before starting P1 and still has accidents multiple times a week (thankfully a close, older relative lives walking distance from the school and she can take changes of clothes down if needed) but by severely disabled ik assuming you're imagining severe physical disabilities or complete inability to communicate? A lot of disabilities that aren't immediately apparent affect toiletinh capabilities.

I honestly thought this was the norm in the UK. I live in London and the pre-school my DC attended had the exact same rule for NT children. They are 9 and 11 now. I’m not sure if things changed in more recent years.

I think if schools in this country implemented the same rule then the gentle parents who don’t want to subject their kids to the potty and the lazy ones who just can’t be fecked would change tack pretty quickly. There is no reason for a NT 4 year old to be in a nappy.

Exactly.

If a 7-11 year old isn't changing themselves then they probably can't.

Mine is unable to.

The poster said

DH did get a shock at having to oversee nappy changes at KS2 tbh & it was the TA who did it. But he often had to be in the toilet area. So I don’t think most teachers would be keen.

Why would an experienced teacher be surprised if the children are severely disabled? The post suggests that maybe this wasn't the case.

The point of this thread is to highlight that, of course, when a child has a disability, expectations around potty training must be adjusted, as these children have special needs. However, it seems that more and more children regardless of disability are struggling with this skill. The thread has mentioned some possible contributing factors, such as the availability of affordable, absorbent pull-ups in larger sizes, unrealistic, permissive or disengaged parenting, and the challenge of both parents working and not having time enough at home to see the potty training through although this is a bit illogical as many nurseries prefer children to be toilet trained but this could be contributing factor.

Bring back Sure Start centres to guide parents during these important early years.

In the past those with additional needs went to residential schools, institutions, died young due to lack of nutrition and medical care, were kept home with stay at home parents out of sight of the world.

Now we have a world where we educate children to the best of their ability, or at least that's the aim.

That's what changed.

@MissTRENDING I guess he wasn't able to. He was actually offered a place at a SEN school but Mum really wanted him in mainstream and so was resistant to him going. I believe the teacher the following year said she was unable to meet his needs and deal with an otherwise tricky class behaviour wise. So he has now gone to SEN school.

I don't think people who have never taught can comprehend how difficult it is to meet the needs of so many children all at once for a full day.

Personally I would not be keen to nappy change and provide intimate care for a child beyond toddler age. I am sympathetic to the child with special needs but don't see that a teacher in primary school should be cleaning up bums. I don't think parents should just assume that a class teacher will be OK to do this. It would be quite smelly beyond the age of 2-3 I would say.

Why is the UK so hopeless -Covid was everywhere but it is the excuse for everything now

Do you think it’s because of closures of special schools?

Well obviously if they could, they would.

It really is.

Though I am happy that he gets to stay in his mainstream school, it would've been a last resort for him to move schools.

Consanguinity. And pushy parents that don't understand child development attempting potty training too early and causing long term toileting problems.

In KS2, so ages 7-11, unless a disability prevents them from managing independently, can children who are not toilet trained change their own pull-up nappies?

It’s so broken, isn’t it. The sen unit here doesn’t tend to accept children with global developmental delay until at least year 2 (occasionally year 1). They argue that there is nothing they can do for a reception child that can’t be done in a mainstream school, with a 1 to 1 support worker. Those children go to mainstream in nappies because the council can’t allocate them an appropriate space.

In general I agree with this, though I do think there could be some cases where there can be advantages to special schools. I've heard a few people lament the loss of programs that they had available as students specifically for blind or deaf children, for example.

I think though we should be less hesitant about specialist provisions in general. Mainstream school works when the children in a class of 18 or 25 have similar educational needs. Children who really struggle, or are very bright, may well do better in a class more directed to their needs, as well as children with other kinds of issues that affect what kind of education is best for them.

Inclusion as an educational principle has become ideological, resulting in classrooms where few if any children have their educational needs met.

In my town we do have several special schools but all children must have profound and severe learning disabilities, a few of them also require children to have global developmental delay.

My son is physically disabled but has no learning disabilities and is capable of meeting key stage targets so he'd have no chance of getting in to one of the special schools.

DH did get a shock at having to oversee nappy changes at KS2 tbh & it was the TA who did it. But he often had to be in the toilet area. So I don’t think most teachers would be keen. They are mostly nice people who would just get on with it.

I obviously can only speak with very limited and local knowledge, but in our town they all but closed the sen school. At its last ofsted inspection in the early 2000s there were over 300 pupil on the role. It is now a small unit within another school, and has spaces for only 60. Previously it served children aged 2-18, with lots of different needs. My friend’s older brother went there. It was a long time ago, his only diagnosis was ‘special needs and learning difficulties’. He’s in his 40s now, and has a mental age of about 6ish. My old hairdresser also attended. They focused heavily on getting children their maths and English GCSE’s, which allowed them to access college courses (so it wasn’t just the most extreme needs that were supported.).

Now, a little boy in my son’s year 3 class is completely nonverbal, uses reigns when he walks outside, and is unlikely to ever be able to dress/use the toilet himself. There is not a space for him in that school because it takes less than 1/5 of the students it used to. There are so many children in my son’s school with EHCP that they’ve been able to hire teachers to work solely with the children who will never meet the key stage targets, to try and give them the best outcome. Obviously this is a vicious circle, because then parents are told that as mainstream school is ‘meeting their needs’, they aren’t priority for the sen unit.
My mam is a TA, the little girl she works with would have absolutely had a place at the old sen school. But because they can pay my mam to work 1 to 1 with her, again the council view it as mainstream meeting her needs.

This is obviously a very localised view. But I can’t imagine it’s super rare.