To expect the school to provide more lunchtime supervision for my allergic child?

[alison222]

Twice in the last 2 weeks my 6 year old has come back home with remains of food I have not given him in his lunchbox. He has a number of food allergies and this is worrying me no end.
He says - in his opinion reasonably- that it was OK because it is food I may give him at home.
I have spoken to him at length regarding whether he had checked labels for changes in ingredients and how he could be sure that the others hadn't had sandwich contents he is allergic to and could have contaminated their food.

Whilst he is aware he shouldn't take others food he is also going through a phase of not wanting to be different to everyone else and this is causing problems.

I have written to the school and spoken to the head this morning. They are going to have him eat lunch by himself this week to try to reinforce it to him and to talk to the school class by class of the importance of not sharing food.
I am going back to talk to the head at the end of the week. This is obviously not a long term solution. I want to know what I could EXPECT the school reasonably to do regarding lunchtime supervison.

The head tried to pass it back to me saying they couldn't provide one to one sueprvison for him, and that ultimately it was down to him {shock}
I pointed out he is only 6 and couldn't be expected to have that sort of responsibility.
I hope when he has had time to reflect that he will realise it is their problem too.
How dare he try to put that back to a 6 year old!!!!!!

Any experience/ideas anyone?

I think it is very sad that the school's solution to this is to have your son eat alone this week.
I am, however, not surprised at the lack of support - I have years of experience in trying to get support from an English state primary school, although for different reasons.
It sounds like you are in the awkward position of having to decide whether to kick ass and threaten the school with formal complaints, or trying to maintain an amicable relationship with the adults who are in loco parentis for your child.
What are the allergies, and how do they affect your son if he eats food containing things he is allergic too?

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the school to supervise yr ds while he is eating lunch. This is potentially a matter of life or death for him. In any case he should become more aware of his allergy in the next year or so so it is not like this is going to be needed on a permanent basis.

Is there anyway your ds could share a table with one or two of his friends only? You could then speak to their mums and ask them to try and avoid foods that have the wrong sort of things in AND more importantly the children could be spoken to and told not to give ds any food. If yr ds was on the same smaller table each day it would also be easier to supervise.

Is it a matter of life and death though?
My DS2 has food allergies, but luckily they are not life-threatening.
If it life-threatening and they are not supervising your DS properly, then that is an incredibly serious matter.

See my other tread in allergies which has taken off.
He is anaphlactic to sheeps cheese. not eggs. Don't know about the nuts as as far as I know he has never had them - only possibly as contamination before I knew he was allergic to them.

I don't expect other parents to have to watch what they put in their children's food.

The school are supposed to have a no sharing policy and are supposed to supervise him. they are not doing it very well though.

He is highly intelligent and very aware of the allergics to the point of embarresment and shoud know beeter but he is only 6. surley the school can be expected to provide an alternative to isolation?

Surely this counts as a type of special need and more supervision can be provided directly for him and any other children with allergies.

If so how would this work?

sheeps cheese is quite unusual isnt it? and nuts are not allowed in most schools - is this the case at yours?

is your child carrying an epi pen? does the school have one too? It might help to have that as a standby in the worst case scenario - held by a trained first -aider.

I think in your case this might be preferable to exclusion - (that is a terrible idea from the head - just rubbish). If your child was at high risk from a more common food such as fish then I would take advice from local healthy authority/county on special need requirements but as i think the risk seems to be low, then this might be a more long-term solution?

He is allergic to fish and all seafood too, also eggs, nuts & sesame. They are all common foods.
The school have an epi-pen and antihistamine. My conern is more that they shouldn't need to use it if they were supervising a bit better.

The head tried to tell me that it was down to Ds taking responsibility for his own life. He is only 6 FGS not 16. Surely they don't expect him to have total resposibiliy at this age?

erm yes they do. my dd1 has allergies and is actually very repsonsible about what she eats. she turns down sweets, will ask whats in stuff, and is very careful. i will often hear her shout at the school gates 'muuuum can i have these sweets' when they are being handed out at the door.

she is not anaphyalatic though, but has been in hospital several times with reactions.

oh she is just 7 btw, has been like this for years.

Misdee - until now DS has been fine and is usually very good about what he eats - refuses sweets etc as your child does, but this is a recent thing. He is going through an "its not fair and I don't want to be different" phase.
I do understand and sympathise with him but this is too important for us to ignore and to let him experiment. I obviously do all I can , talking and explaining to him, but when he is at school it is out of my control. than's why I want to try to get the school to help more.

I don't want him isolated or having to come home but unless i can be sure that he won't try others food what else do I do in the meantime. I don't want him to learn the hard way by having a reaction.
The other thing is he might get blase about it and then try something he really shouldn't. so far it has been stuff likely to be relatively OK provided the person before him hasn't had tuna or egg sarnies and dippedtheir hand in the crisps.

its hard, and i know you dont want to learn by having a reaction

is there any sort of treat you can promise for after school?

dd1 allwergies are to food colourings so it can be quite hard to check at times, so glad the school now has healthy eating policy and no food colourings.

Update:
Having collected DS from school this afternoon, it seems that the school have had time to think this through a little.
Today DS went to lunch with one of his frineds who has one to one help for a physical disability so that she could keep an eye on Ds and make sure he was not taking food from others. This is to continue all week - and longer if we decide it is necessary. The pupils are to be reminded of the no sharing policy in school and why it is in force in assembly tomorrow, so it seems that it may all calm down quite nicely

Thanks to everyone who posted and let me get it all out of my system this morning

you were def not unreasonable - so glad the school has come up with a sensible strategy x

oh thats sounds lieka great idea. i hope it all works out and your son doesnt take food off other kids anymore.

Glad this seems to be sorted but, just to be the voice of dissent, I think you are being unreasonable. There are limits to what lunchtime staff can do with the sort of funding most LEAs allow.

At our school for example we have an average of 200 kids staying for dinner each day, approx half of which are packed lunches. Age range 4-11.

There are 15 lunchtime supervisors to cover 80 minutes of lunchtime. We are split between the dining hall, 2 playgrounds, a school field and 6 children needing 1 to 1 supervision (all statemented). Without statements, we don't get funding for 'extra' (ha, what a laugh) staff. Currently we have 17 kids with allergies, 2 of them in the reception class.

Other than sitting a child somewhere on their own, or relying on the good will of older children to help in the supervision, there really is very little more a school can do.

Sorry, that turned into a bit of a rant about the results of crap funding

Don't worry about that.
I have now had a written response from the head. It says that although the help this week is good and may be what it needs to get DS back on thrack they can't give him one to one supervision.
I have spoken to the anaphylaxis campaign and they echo you that unless he has other problems for which the school can get funding then they can't stretch the supervision too much.

It seems such a riduculous situation that because of this lack of funding that a 6 year old is expected to be totally responsible for what he puts in his mouth and so potentially for his life at such a tender age.

Now I am ranting back - but in agreement with you