To think this is NOT good enough?! I am furious!!

[Peanutsaga]

NC’d So dd (8) has a nut allergy and has an epipen that she brings to school. Long story short, a girl in her class brought in a cereal type bar into school with her lunch but it had peanuts and other nuts in it as well as chocolate chips (you know the ones!)
Dd informed me that she saw said girl with the bar and then avoided her for the rest of the day and she could even smell the peanuts. I called into the school to let them know that this had happened but in short I was told, that the school had informed the parents of the no nut policy and sent it out via letter and newsletter, and that there wasn’t much else they can do as they cannot police the lunch boxes every morning. Is that it? I feel really let down and nervous about dd at school now!!

@Angelw you are completely unhinged if you think it's fair to expel kids because their parents forgot to check the ingredients list of their child's cereal. Please do not waste your MPs time with such ridiculous suggestions.

OP YABU, please look at Allergy Advice UK. Nut free policies are not recommended anymore and your school is already doing more than they are legally expected to.

As PP have said, your DD knew how to handle the situation and this is the only thing that will ever ensure her safety.

At the end of the day there are hundreds of kids with fatal allergies, we can't ban them all.

YANBU - I have always been ultra careful in what I let my kids take in to school as I would be mortified that something I did caused harm to a child.

I think you need to have a meeting with the school about this. If not for them to police lunch boxes but at least to develop a strategy that your daughter or anyone else seeing a nut product reports it to a member of staff who can remove the nut product and remind that child's parents that they are not allowed in school. It is a primary school and you daughter is 8 so of course they are responsible but they won't necessarily spot nut products if they are brought in unless they are alerted to it. They may not have felt they could specifically contact those individual parents if they hadn't seen the it themselves.

Could the school send out a letter to parents in your daughter's class telling the that someone is their class has a nut allergy otherwise parents may just think it is a cautionary blanket policy?

There's someone is DS school with some form of nut allergy (not just peanut, or maybe not peanut at all and just other nuts, not sure if it's a child or a staff member to be fair). They've been putting a lot of notices out about being a nut free school. They've now blanket banned chocolate spread because some parents didn't see the harm nor could understand that their are nut free versions available. It's a struggle for them tbh, and unless they go full on checking all the lunchboxes then I can't see how they can stop it happening. Which sucks for the allergy sufferer more than anyone.

If you don't have a allergy you really are not very aware of what is in food, the parents most probably didn't even realise they also might have forgot.

I think its awful! There is such a thing as allergy discrimination. My niece has an allergy and when looking for schools, one school we went to said they were not happy to have her because a staff member likes to graze on a nut mix through the day. Are they for real? That school closed down a year or two later anyways, that wasn't the only thing they were completely clueless about!

A nut allergy is a life threatening condition! If they thought a child was bringing in a knife every morning, they would certainly be searching every lunch box! Nuts are as dangerous to your child as a knife, if not more. I would get on to the school and threaten to sue, they will soon be onto the parents! I don't know why they wouldn't just approach the kids mum directly, news letters don't get read! They stay in the bottom of a kids bag until they get crushed in with a mouldy banana!

I don't think its at all acceptable and you should defo complain.

angelw . I suggest they make it policy that any parent that sends their child with any of the listed allergens will be expelled from the school really?!

I am not a fan of nut-free schools. However, as the school proclaims to be nut-free I do feel they have taken on responsibility for this.

I would go back to them and ask them to again send out a notice about nuts. Comment there IS a child with a severe nut allergy in this notice.

I would also as suggested elsewhere on the thread have a meeting to discuss safeguarding of your dds nut allergy.

What happens when she does see someone eating nuts. who should she go to? what is the agreed procedure the school will deal with once this happens again.

My school in Aus does not ban any allergy food.

I was surprised at first but the reason was something along the lines of allergies need to be managed in the real world, you can't blanket ban nuts for example.

So if dd1 had a friend who had an allergy they would talk openly and often about it, making sure friends didn't bring in whatever it was they were allergic to.

I can see this logic.

I was once booking an event for grads for my company and one of the grads asked if I could confirm there would be no nuts on the flights or during his time away.

I told him I couldn't confirm that and so he didn't come.

At DS2's school they certainly police the lunch boxes. Before I knew they'd brought in the policy, he had a Graze snack confiscated. How is it not possible?

Maybe they should have a segregated area for such children to eat lunch? Its a shame the majority have to miss out, and there is a chance they'll also develop an allergy to nuts if they dont eat them.

What would have been a good enough response to you?

Im assuming your daughter is fine and the incident has not affected her health. What are you going to do when she's older, gets a job and has to use public transport? Will you write firm letters to the train lines? Believe me I know how dangerous it can be for people with bad allergies, but you can't expect her to never come into contact.

The anaphylaxis campaign don't recommend nut bans in schools. Because it induces a false sense of security - you can't rely on the world at large to know about 'secret' peanut sources (how many people know that groundnut oil is made of peanuts for eg?). Also, why is it always peanuts that get special treatment? Where do you stop in banning foods? I have a child that is anaphylactic to dairy and nobody is suggesting that we implement dairy bans in schools, even though it is obviously a massively more common ingredient and the chances of a reaction much greater...

I think you've done an amazing job teaching your daughter to stay safe. That's the most important thing.

No where is a safe zone and actually providing one could give her artificial sense of safety out and about in the real world.

As plenty of people have said, you have no idea whether a parent at the gate has just had peanut butter etc.

Also, If I had an allergy I would never trust any labels etc. People who eat out trusting what the label says. Sack that! I'd be eating home made items only.

I don't mean this to sound goady but what are you going to do when your DD goes to secondary school? At primary my DS couldn't have nuts or eggs but now at secondary he quite regularly takes peanut butter sandwiches?

But showmewhatyougot, this is a young child in their school, not an adult/older child on a train. If the school don't operate the no nut policy properly then every lunch time this poor child is going to be worried about accidentally eating the crumbs from another child's nut bar or coming into contact with smears of peanut butter. This child has to be relentlessly careful every day of their life, including at school, but they deserve there being measures in place to mitigate the risks in school, surely? While they're so young especially.
My child is allergic to peanuts. She knows school isn't 100% safe, but she's understandably anxious if someone is eating peanuts around her. If it happens at school, staff take action, and this reassures her it won't happen too often. She feels safer (not 100% safe). When she's older, she'll have to manage this herself, without help from the rules/adults around her. For now she is a young child and I think it's right that school help to minimise the risk.

Starutopia, what on earth would you be making your homemade meals out of without needing to check labels?! Allergic people have to rely on labels, unless they're going to produce all their own food from scratch, including milling their own grains etc...!

OP

Did your DD say anything to either the child or the teacher?

She sounds very sensible but I wonder why she didn't say anything (unless she did).

I don't really accept the school's logic about not policing lunch boxes. Plenty of schools police lunch boxes to eg make sure there are no sweets or chocolate.

So if they can do that, they can recognise the main cereal bars with nuts, too. I accept they won't know all the ingredients of every bar, but some are pretty obvious so they can certainly do more than they are claiming.

I think it should be more "policed" within the younger primary years - Nursery definitely (I sent DS in with peanut butter in the first week and was really apologetic when I was called out on it!) Reception and Yr1 - quick checks over the lunchboxes. Just a lunchtime supervisor/volunteer who knows how to spot nut products looking over the meals. This role could be advertised for and I'm sure it'd get filled. These children (with and without allergies) don't understand the seriousness yet - and parents are going to forget to check every products ingredients that goes in lunchboxes. I know I have before when so much crap has been going on in my life at once. I do usually remember when lunchbox shopping though (have a separate shopping list for it).

The older years I think the children should be expected by then to take care of themselves in this way. Dd informed me that she saw said girl with the bar and then avoided her for the rest of the day - that's great for example, although she should maybe could have alerted a teacher too so the nuts were removed from the child asap. But she protected herself and that's the main thing. You can praise her and relax a bit knowing that surely?

My DS's primary is nut-free and we get a reminder weekly in the News emails, but I think a lot of parents don't read them. There are also constant reminders (which are getting less and less polite) to NOT PARK IN THE DROP OFF ZONE (and huge signs everywhere) - no one ever takes any notice of that one and that's getting really dangerous to all children.

It’s serious enough, yes if she was to come in contact with someone who had eaten peanuts there’s a strong possibly of a reaction ( not anaphylaxis though on secondary contact/skin contact per se) but let’s say she had a boyfriend when she was older and they kissed then she would.

And this is where your BU and in denial or likely ill informed of you’re child’s allergy.

Your trying to placate yourself that your child’s school is a “safe zone” doesn’t exists

She doesn’t have an airborne allergy, you are aware that a lot of the children had nuts of some descriptions for breakfast etc... or a cereal bar containing nuts walking to school....

As for her kissing someone whose eaten nuts.... again this would be an education and awareness route your dd even at this age must be aware about, as someone could kiss her on the cheek as sort of a greeting etc...

it’s completely hysterical to “be furious” that a school cannot guarantee you a so called imaginary “safe zone....”

HaudYerWheeshtYaWeeBellend the OP isn't asking school to make itself 100% safe or guarantee anything! She's furious that the school isn't taking action to mitigate the risk to her daughter so that she feels safer. I don't understand why your response to that is to say the OP is being hysterical!

There is no such thing as “nut free” a school will not be able to police this...

Some manufacturers voluntarily include a “may contain” statement on their labels when there is a chance that a food allergen could be present.

A manufacturer might use the same equipment to make different products. ... In this case, the cracker label might state “may contain peanuts.”

Just because parents are aware peanuts and nuts don’t enter the school grounds, does not mean traces of these allergies don’t make it into the ground, so to say it’s a “nut free” school is virtually impossible to manage and misleading.

I have a bit allergy kid. I wouldn’t think it reasonable to assume that a school was a nut free zone even though it had a bit policy. Mind you I don’t trust restaurants to heed warnings of jut allergies either. Obviously most of the time allergy policies are followed so there is no risk but every now and then something will slip through the cracks. It’s pretty inevitable because people just don’t care that much.

HaudYerWheeshtYaWeeBellend All true. I'm still very grateful that our school takes steps to reduce the risk to my daughter's safety at school. It significantly improves her quality of life, although of course we all still understand she is not 100% guaranteed safety.

Fortunately DS outgrew his multiple allergies before school, but I remember the fear of being at a casual toddler group, stalking my 1 year old to ensure he didn't hoover up the multiple-allergen crumbs of cake being shed around by laxly supervised toddlers being allowed to run around with food. At nursery, it could be managed with 1:1 supervision, sitting seperately and colour coded plates. I've cooked for multiple allergies between different people on multi-day camps. I am reasonably allergy aware.

Even so, I've realised that I have mistakenly sent DS1 into school with pesto pasta on a day when I'd run out of bread to make sandwiches and it's the one day that he doesn't have a lunch due to eating around a music lesson. I remember that he can't take Nakd Bars, or I can't use Nutella or most chocolate spreads for cake sales, but "nuts" is a broad range of ingredients and nut allergies can be quite specific. When thinking of pesto, my primary thought is "basil, oil and cheese" (I used to have to buy free-from for the dairy content), so unless I have a specific reason in mind, I'm not used to scruitinising labels for any nut related content. DS2 does have a child with nut allergies in his class so I make sure that he is well cleaned after breakfast to reduce the chance of introducing allergens to her.

Ultimately the allergy sufferer's best self-defense is their own awareness and good practice. OP's daughter has done a good job of managing the potential hazard. Sadly constant reminders to parents can just become background noise, most people aren't label checkers and some are just ignorant and selfish no matter how much you attempt to educate them.