School dinners. Can staff really do this?

[SoyUnPerdedor2]

Trying to keep it vague as haven't been able to get a meeting yet.
My dd returned to school after summer holiday. Same school she has been to, for a couple of years. Since she a tarted age 4.

Same staff. Same head. Same catering team.
Small village school. Single class intake.

Dd is key stage 1. So gets free dinners. All ks1 get them.

Dd has a dairy allergy. She has had this since birth. School are fully aware and kept her dairy free in the previous years.

Yesterday, I got a phone call after lunch. Asking me to collect dd as she had got an upset stomach and had pooed in the classroom.
As soon as I got near her, I could smell poo. Not normal poo, but the awful smelly stuff she made as a baby, before we got her allergy sorted.
So I asked what she had eaten. Macaroni cheese. Normal macaroni cheese. With real cheese.
Apparently, she has been taken off the allergy list, due to a paperwork issue?
School haven't updated her care thing, so gave her normal food. Knowing it would make her poorly.

Who is my issue with here?
School? Teacher? Office staff? Catering staff?
Dd is not old enough to fully understand food restrictions. She usually asks if it's OK for her. But with new kids starting, lots of noise.. I would not put the blame on her.

She has had this since birth, it is not new. If she has been educated at home correctly she should know what she can/cannot eat.

Just as I would expect parents of a child with a known peanut allergy to have taught their kid about not eating peanut butter or a snickers bar from a very early age

Some children won't be able to. Schools need to be inclusive of a variation of needs. Some children at this age just won't be confident challenging an adult they know is in authority.

Sorry but for an allergy that serious the child should be taught to be forthright over not eating something that will make them ill.

Sorry but at 6, nearing 7 the child should be capable. In the same way they know when they need a wee.

The school are absolutely at fault but the op should also take a degree of responsibility that she has not ensures her child is knowledgeable and resilient enough to to protect herself

The child has also spent the last two years happily knowing School dinners where a safe food. A time they could relax and enjoy dinner with Their peers. Understandabe that at 6 she didn’t think to question!

The people to blame are adults somewhere in the school who haven’t made sure a child in their care was safe

She has had this since birth, it is not new. If she has been educated at home correctly she should know what she can/cannot eat.

She probably assumed that they had given her a safe alternative.

My daughter is in year 2 and also has a milk allergy.

Staff in her school kitchen have photos of all the allergy kids laminated and stuck on the wall, along with a list of what they can’t have. They also have different coloured trays (although the kids do need to be very clearly taught which colour to pick up for that to work).

She’s never had the problem your daughter has (poor wee thing), in fact, no slip ups at all. Sadly, this week she got a plain baked potato and some broccoli one day. That was it, nothing else!

Anyway, start with the school admin and head teacher and maybe suggest a system like my daughter’s school have?

YANBU to be cross. My daughter lost 16% of her birthweight by day 3 and was hospitalised for ages. She was so ill they thought she had some kind of rare cancer at first! She dropped right off the weight charts, far below the lowest centile.
She’s fine now, healthy weight for her height, but our entire household has to be dairy free to keep her that way.
Until you have a child with food allergies, you have no idea how debilitating and stressful it can be.

Hope you get things sorted soon.

@Wheresthel1ght I understand what you're saying but it was Mac and cheese. You can make dairy free mac and cheese so the point here doesn't make sense as she could have it at home - unlike a peanut allergy and a snickers bar.

Plus the OP has already said in previous posts that she does educate her dc and have had these discussions but in the end she's still only a child and it's the responsibility of those caring for her to ensure she doesn't have anything unsafe.

If the catering is delivered by the council then it’s the catering dept you have the issue with and it’s the manager you need to discuss the issue with.
The Headteacher with regards lunchtimes is not always the provider and whilst they are responsible for classroom and school issues they are not always liable for lunches. Check the policy.

All allergy kids (in my school) are kept on the list regardless of year changes, and are not taken off unless we have confirmation from the school head/deputy head that they’ve been taken off the allergy list after getting notification to do so from the parents.

There is a possibility that your child was mixed up with another dairy allergy child and taken off the list. If that’s the case, the blame should lie with the school staff and whoever is responsible for informing the kitchen staff of changes.

Kitchen staff are way more up to date with allergies because they can face penalties.

Your first port of call should be with the head teacher to find out the school protocols and how your daughter was removed from the allergy list.

@giraffe I understand that, however, as most kids go up to a counter surely she would see they have served her out of the same serving dish as everyone else? That should have flagged to her that something is wrong.

I think there's two issues here, first and foremost School have failed in their duty of care, and that needs some serious words. She’s been there for several years, the staff know about her food issues and have the paperwork in place.

Secondly, my youngest daughter is dairy intolerant, she started school aged 4 years and was perfectly capable of asking if food had dairy in it. She knew what foods might be bad for her and would ask staff before choosing. So whilst the school has failed massively here, your daughter is also old enough to be able to identify possible problem foods and ask a clear question: “does this have milk in it?” not just ‘is this alright for me?’

The balance of responsibility for ensuring safe provision of food lies with the school not a KS1 pupil. Especially when the pupil is not new. That said the Op has said her DD is learning to check food when they go shopping, her DD knows not to share and that her DD will usually ask if she's not certain

Take it up with the Head. Whilst acknowledging mistakes do happen this kind should not. Your child isn't new to the school surely whoever makes up the list coukd have noticed her omission. Would even go so far as to expect the Head to explain to the class why the "accident" happened emphasising how your child was very brave with how she coped with the whole experience.

If the head has not responded correctly, which seems to be the case, then I wouldn't hesitate to take it to the school governors. And to make it clear that if that is not satisfactory the next step will be an official complaint against the school to the local authority.

Doesn't matter how wonderful the school are in other respects this is a serious issue. Your child did suffer harm. A child could die. And of course people make mistakes, but it is how they deal with them that matters. Any school staff who would minimise this and not take any and every precaution to make sure it didn't happen again is falling very short in their duty of care.

And to anyone who suggests that any child be exclulded when they have any health or disability issue which can, in fact, be addressed with the correct prodedures, or any adult from any avenue of society for that matter, fuck off. I aren't even engaging with that shit.

id be going batshite crazy your daughter must have been at least embarrassed at most in pain nope i would be wanting this sorted

Just to give you an idea of our lunch hall, the children don't choose a meal. They get main or veggie main pre chosen all week. Special diets are made to look as similar as main so the children don't feel singled out the caterers plate up a few plates ahead and will plate up special diets as they see the child approaching, all from an eye level counter which a lot of children could not see the dishes from. So I don't think a child who had eaten a particular dish on a three weekly rota for 2 years would think to ask.

This awful OP and I can’t believe how many people are so quick to blame you! The school has a duty of care and they failed in that. Your poor dd.

My dd is 14 and has a severe peanut allergy. Even at 14 she won’t eat school meals as she finds it impossible to ask busy and frazzled dinner ladies for clarification about what is ok for her to eat when there is a huge queue of noisy kids messing around behind her. NO WAY should a 7 year old be expected to do this on their own.

My dd also had an incident at school ( in a class activity) which resulted in her having an adrenaline injection and being taken to A&E. We had no apology as that would be accepting blame and make them liable. However they have taken the incident seriously and changed a number of practices to make it safer for all children with allergies.

I work in a school kitchen and think this terrible. Our school is bigger than yours but the dinner ladies know all of the children with intolerances. Even if she had slipped off the paperwork the staff should have still known her and double checked with her.

I would not be sending her back until they seriously address this, and I would be kicking up an absoloute stink about it!

How embarrassing and unfair for your DD

Oh I quite agree with kate that some kids might be jealous of the attention those with allergies get. I am quite sure my then-6 year old's DS's friends were enormously jealous when he had an anaphylactic reaction followed by a cardiac arrest because there was a cross contamination somewhere with peanuts. (We still don't know why... my best guess is that someone had peanut butter on toast and some got on their fingers, and then they used it on a doorknob.)

But there are actually still people out there that think allergies are made up nonsense.

No kids are jealous of the kid at the birthday party who never gets cake or ice cream. Being an allergy kid is alienating and not a whole lot of fun.

My DS's little class mates are brilliant about his allergies. Whenever there is a class birthday I get texts from the parent saying 'Can LittleFliesHome eat this...?' It's rather sweet.

Posters on here minimising the severity are just heartless and out of touch.

My son does the same on dairy OP, my sympathies to your daughter, she must of been mortified.

I had to change my sons nursery last year as they couldn’t get to grips with his restrictions. It really just felt like child abuse in the end as they kept giving him food that made him ill, isn’t that basically poisoning?

It's a parents responsibility to inform the school every new school year (and more often of required). We don't have a crystal ball.
What an attitude!

I'd be sorely tempted to complain to Ofsted - it's a serious child safety issue, and the school have failed to ensure your child's welfare. They've made your daughter horribly poorly, but they could have killed a child with a more serious allergy. That's quite a thing to shrug off as a paperwork cock up.

No one has minimised it, we have all said the school is at fault. Some of us have also pointed out that as a parent the op has a responsibility to ensure her 6/7 year old is aware of what she can and cannot eat and questions if she is unsure.

I am dairy allergic, have been since a particularly nasty stomach bug triggered it at age 11, I have also had reactions like the ops daughter at school, at uni, on a conference because the "dairy free" option wasn't actually dairy free.

I am also suffer anaphylaxis to anything with chilli in it. Right down to if someone has eaten it and then speaks to me my lips swell, my throat closes and I need my eoipen. I am fully aware of the dangers involved in allergies. Which is why I say the child should be educated and taught to question and not assume things are safe.

At a taster day at school dd was 3. They tried to give her tomato, she is allergic to citric acid. She stood her ground and refused to eat it. Was able to explain they would make her poorly. School didn't believe her, but she was so adamant the teacher decided to check with the office who had been fully informed of her issues and backed up dd. Sorry but if a 3 year old can do it in their first ever interaction with school then a 6/7 year old who has been there and knows the staff is more than capable of speaking up