Schools Providing Sanitary Products

[Sansastark45]

Don't get me wrong periods aren't nice at the best of time but don't our schools have enough on their plates without now having to take on this??

Am i being unreasonable to think that if you have a daughter you should be having the conversation with her?? Basic own brand sanitary products are cheap enough to buy - our schools shouldn't be left to deal with this too!

I work in a secondary school, last week I saw the caretaker dragging a full trolley load of san pro in. It’s supplied in every girls and disabled toilets. Has been for a long time. We have a multi-cultural, mixed economic community and some girls take a whole pack home if they need to. It isn’t means tested and it isn’t abused either. Personally I think it’s basic human dignity and recognises the very real reality that for some students they have no other option.

My Secondary School always provided SanPro to any girl who needed it. The fact that it was an all girls school probably helped.

I started my period when I was 10 in primary though and all the school could offer me was a nappy from the nursery to line my knickers with!

My mum was another one who didn’t buy them. Periods were embarrassing and shameful in my house growing up. I started at 11 and had no idea wht they were as she never told me about them so it was abit of a surprise. She never really bought Sanpro so I mainly used tissue. Would have been nice to have them at school. I also didn’t get given pocket money so couldn’t buy them myself.

Some parents don’t provide their girls with this. This just don’t see why they should spend their money on it. So sad

It's great news but where are they going to be? On show in the unisex toilets?

If men had periods, sanpro would have been free for kids and tax free for adults years ago.

I had to use toilet roll for years at school it was awful. I feel like crying thinking about it. No girl should have to suffer that.

My workplace also provides free products - it's great not having to walk into toilets with your handbag and you also never get caught with an early period and no products.

So do mine, bless 'em. If my period came on unexpectedly their regular tampax would barely give me time to stagger to my bag for something a bit more substantial, but at least they try.

I think yabu OP periods aren't a luxury. I doubt the girls who have their own plentiful supplies of their own choice would use them anyway.

But will it be means tested?

Totally. The well provided for girls who have the products that they choose and lots of nice comfortable underwear won't use it. The most reliable means testing ever

Your question isn't the real issue here. The real question should be: why in an industrialised society/developed nation in 2020 do we have such acute inequality that young girls don't have access to something as basic as sanitary products?

I'm another who wasn't bought them and didn't have money to buy them. I used tissue. Sometimes it fell to pieces and it moved about and I was stained and smelt.
If schools providing them stops girls from having to go to lessons in that state then I'm all for it.

As a child of well off parents, who never once spoke to me about periods and never once bought me a single sanitary towel or tampon, and as a child who suffered

For people that don't want the idea of San pro "abused" cos let's face it stealing or fraudulently claiming free san pro is such a hip and cool status thing for a teenage girl ffs what about rationing toilet paper? After all those that don't have adequate supplies of sanpro are likely to be "stealing" vast amounts of toilet paper from school that other people have paid for....

I have no idea why anyone would be against it. You have to be completely lacking in empathy or brains.

Young girls who have just started their periods can be caught short or start their first period at school. I remember having sanitary towels but suddenly flooding and going through more towels than I had in my bag.

Then of course there are those who can't afford them etc. They are not a luxury item and there should be a supply for those who are caught short and for those whose parent's can't or won't buy them, because that is not the girls fault.

The comparison to providing free toilet paper is spot on. If everyone was expected to supply their own toilet paper, would it surprise you that some people, regardless of their parents’ financial situation, didn’t carry with them every day?

I’m a teacher and half the class don’t come with a pencil! What do you propose I do? Ask to see their parents’ bank balance before I lend them one?

My daughter's periods are irregular so far and, despite best efforts, she, like every other woman at some point in her life, could get caught short.

I didn’t have money to buy them and even if I did I’d have been too embarrassed to. My mum never spoke to me about periods, but would buy me pads that were as thick as a brick with no packaging or wings byAnd only a tiny sticky strip. Try smuggling one of those up your sleeve to go to the bathroom! They also bunched up in the middle and so I’d have stained underwear. It was really embarrassing at school as all my friends used Always. My mum said they were far too expensive.

I remember once I used toilet paper and was wearing my school skirt. As I was walking along the shredded wad of blood stained tissue fell on the pavement!

My parents wouldn’t have been considered poor.

I personally buy a pack that is in my desk drawer. The girls in year 4 5 and 6 know where they are in case they get caught short or simply don’t have them. School does get sent free ones from the larger producers so we do have some available anyway. I only buy them myself because for the faff of getting petty cash I can’t be arsed. School would buy them if I suggested it. As someone who had horrific periods from the age of 12 I can’t imagine what it must be like with the added worry of where to getting sanitary products.

Along with a few other girls, we used to give products to one girl whose father refused to buy them - he later was convicted of neglect and abuse. We also clubbed together to buy her a bra - they were not a poor family and outwardly they were respectable, leaders in a Pentecostal church.

And I also don't understand why reusables and given out instead of disposables
Go on think about it for longer than 5 seconds and you will figure it out. Do you really want young girls carrying smelly used San pro around all day? Then having to hand wash them if thier parents are abusive and won't let them use a machine? Yes let's show them nasty little poor girls a thing or two about reusing stuff eh?

Don't have kids you can't afford.
Nobody is still this stupid are they? Circumstances change ffs!

then the most cost effective method should be used.
How much more cost effective than free can you get?

Period poverty is a real issue. Vulnerable people, teenage girls are high risk, are going without adequate sanitary provision. Either by using products for longer than recommended (eg tampon for 7 days), using socks or paper towels, or even going without. I work in a impoverished area and our church supplies sanitary products to women for free, the uptake is surprisingly high.

I'm another who was in the toilet roll club. My parents could afford them but not providing them 'clipped my wings'. Providing them for free will stop controlling parents using periods as a prison without bars.

DM had me reasonably prepared for periods starting. On the day it started (in a PE lesson no less I ended up layering up with toilet roll until I could work out a sensible time to get my supplies and use them.
Even so I was not "allowed" tampons for y9 camp and I was concerned that with water based activies, if my period turned up that month while on camp, that I wasn't going to be able to join in. I had been given spending money and snuck off to buy tampons for camp with it. Access to appropriate protection, free of embarasment is so important, especially at a difficult time of life when they may be hard to adjust to for so many reasons.

My cycles were highly erratic until after having children. Even as a teacher I have been caught out (and walked the corridors with a packet stashed up my sleeve. Similarly, many of my personal pads have been given out over the years, I suspect to girls who had been caught out rather than a deeper supply issue. They probably could have been supplied through the school office, but it is less embarasing to approach a trusted teacher.

As much as I love reusable products, and offering them as an option is no bad thing, particularly moon cups, they are not suitable for all circumstances and those without good access to laundry.

We need to talk about "period poverty". We talk about food banks, fuel poverty, costs of school uniform, but 50% of the population who are over-represented in politics, senior management and policy making will never have a period in their lives. Even on a mumsnet discussion about periods, it will always be very telling that the range of personal experiences with periods is diverse, and often women have little idea what periods are like for other women.

My parents could afford them too for what it's worth- both of them were university lecturers. They just preferred drink and gambling to food and clothing etc for their children and there was never any money left over.

As a child of well off parents, who never once spoke to me about periods and never once bought me a single sanitary towel or tampon. As a child who suffered from extremely heavy periods and had to choose between spending my lunch money on lunch or sanitary products. As a child who regularly had to use toilet roll as a substitute which would result in me soaking through my school uniform, I am so so happy about this initiative. Please don’t forget that as well as there being period poverty, there are also children suffering neglect at the hands of their parents. You were loved and cared for by your parents OP, please don’t forget that there are many children out there who are not. I am sad that this didn’t happen in time to help me but I am so pleased that this will be in place to help children in the future. The 13 year old girl inside me who was left to feel dirty and unclean still suffers to this day. We need to all support this initiative and do all we can to help these children who so desperately need it.