exclusion at early yrs settings and preschool.

[eragon]

I wondered if anyone has had any experience of exclusion at a school / nursery for their allergic child?

Did you raise this issue with the staff?

how did they handle this?

(please see my other thread on inclusive work for uni, am trying to see if I am on the correct path iyswim. btw am mum of allergic /intol kids if you dont know me already!)

Yes! we have never actually been kicked out, but DS has been excluded in other insidious ways...

e.g.

• not allowed to bring our own food, even though there was nothing safe provided (at a SureStart toddler group)

• eventually being allowed to bring our own food, but having this explained very apologetically by a member of staff (in an embarrassingly loud voice) to all other parents in front of DS ? ?X has allergies, that?s the only reason he is allowed to eat stuff that his mum has brought with him, otherwise he wouldn?t be allowed because our policy is that all children eat the healthy food that we provide...?

• children allowed to smear yoghurt and other food allergens all over toys (SureStart toddler group and local voluntary groups)

• routines not being suitable (e.g. snack time taking part in the same room as subsequent playtime and food being left all over the floor)

-staff not being made aware of DS?s allergies (local preschool that we tried) so he was asked to help with making Angel Delight (he has severe milk allergy and reacts on skin contact)

• staff promising to keep him safe at snack time, but then allowing another child with buttery fingers to touch his food and try to feed it to him (local preschool that we tried)

• staff forgetting about DS?s allergies, so that he was left unsupervised around allergens (e.g. lentils in water, chocolate cereal boxes etc.) and activities were planned which could possibly have killed him had he taken part (local preschool that we tried)

The list goes on... Reading these boards, I don?t think our experiences are anything unusual I never raised my concerns at the SureStart group, as I didn?t feel confident to do that when DS was very young. At the voluntary groups, I felt that the lovely, elderly ladies running those were doing such a great job with all the other children that I didn?t want to make their lives harder. And at the preschool, I simply couldn?t be bothered ? the staff were so dreadful that I didn?t think they could possibly keep DS or any other allergic children safe!

Anyway, I have replied on your other thread

We were turned down by a childminder within days of day my DS due to start because she became convinced that he was going to drop down dead and we were going to sue her. Despite me providing lots of letters from consultant and endless reassurance about the need to accept some inevitable level of risk and plan for accidents, ways to manage them etc. He had a CMPA and it was relatively mild - no hx of anaphylaxis etc...

I'm glad that it panned out that way because she would have been so anxious that he would have picked up a feeling that he was in imminent danger and despite my best efforts to help him become confident about food, it wouldn't have helped his long term adjustment... However, I felt very sad for him at the time that he had been excluded in this way...

I think written information as you are proposing, if it could be adopted by the Childminding Association / similar body along with sample policies etc would have helped and made her feel less like we were asking her to do something desperately dangerous / unusual...

Thank you.

I have had similar experiences when our son was younger. Our son is 17 now, so its about time the early years practitioners smarted up their act by now.

once I have got this degree under my belt, am seriously going to consider how I directly change some of this. any ideas gratefully accepted here!!!LOL

Dealing with this at the moment & we are:

-training all staff on the specific circumstances of any individual child
-snacks take place on the floor, at a small table or in the kitchen at a high table depending on levels of allergy and food content
-high chairs marked for use by children with allergies and trigger foods not consumed by children using these chairs

But we get it wrong sometimes - we never considered food smeared underneath the table top as a potential problem (although we did think about foods smared on the high chairs and table top); so now the table gets wiped both sides

& we struggle with 'what is OK for one child with allergy is not OK for another child' hence the training stuff

Last sep our egg and milk allergic dd2 started pre school, well I say started but I was not allowed to actually leave her untill:

Pre school had done the epi pen training they were not up to date with

The ins company had said it was ok for dd2 to be there without me

And I had to provide letters from gp and a consultant written care plan. Then they insisted on me staying till they were happy and dd was happy there, it took till mid december!

Then dd got ill and was diagnosed diabetic end dec so back to beginning and I am again not allowed to leave her even for half an hour, nurses have been in 3 times to do training sessions but they are still not confident enough for dd to attend without me.