School catering company asking for proof of my kids allergies before they are allowed school dinners.

[CovidStoleTheRainbow]

Background - my child is anaphylactic to dairy, egg, banana and nuts.
A less severe allergy to wheat, soya, shell fish.

He's entitled to free school meals for a couple of months and we figured he could have jacket potato.

School said not til we filled in a form.
The Chartwells form said not til we have given proof of allergies.
I thought they were joking so I filled in the form but didn't send 'proof'.
School asked for proof, I asked school to photo copy my child's anaphylaxis care plan and send them that.

Got a letter today from Chartwells, saying thanks for the proof of the foods he's severely allergic to, but now prove he's allergic to soya, wheat and shell fish.

I'm a bit 'what the fuck?!' for two reasons.

First of all - proof?! Why? Just allow his limited diet and let him eat a fricking hot spud.

Second of all, the waiting list for the allergy clinic in my area is 2 years before coronavirus issues and it's a fight to get on the list at all so there's kids out there with little to no proof they have allergies or intolerances to food, and many of them will be from families in poverty well in need of free school meals.

Yes I get there will be people who randomly not wanting their kid to eat gluten but with allergies on the rise in the way that they are, they will be the absolute lowest common denominator.

Telling the school your child has a dairy allergy only for them to be allowed regular cheese, cake and custard, milk and white chocolate, ice cream and milkshakes makes you wonder what they are allergic to. If your child doesn't like drinking milk say so. Don't make things harder for those with allergies/intolerances because you cannot be honest with yourself and other people.

I'm probably lactose intolerant, I've never had a test but milk makes me nauseous and if I eat a meal with too much in within about 1 hour I'm on the loo.

I'm an adult so can self police but I'm OK with cheese and small amounts yoghurt. This is quite typical of lots of people who are lactose intolerant, for years I thought it must be something else because cheese is OK.

So I can eat a cheese sandwich no problem but if I have a roast I have to watch out for Yorkshire puddings and mash.

I know it is nothing compared to severe allergies, I'm just making the point that some things you would expect a reaction I don't get one.

Packed lunch? Private allergy test?

@dramalamma He's clearly allergic to gluten (vomits when he eats it - always has) but they want proof. the only way they'll get proof is if I can force him to eat gluten every day (which he will vomit up each time) for 6 weeks and then be tested - which will probably still come up negative because he won't have ingested enough gluten to show up because he's vomits it up every time! It's not worth it

Complete nonsense. You are clearly confusing gluten intolerance (aka celiac disease) and wheat allergy. Look it up.

@sashh

Telling the school your child has a dairy allergy only for them to be allowed regular cheese, cake and custard, milk and white chocolate, ice cream and milkshakes makes you wonder what they are allergic to. If your child doesn't like drinking milk say so. Don't make things harder for those with allergies/intolerances because you cannot be honest with yourself and other people.

I'm probably lactose intolerant, I've never had a test but milk makes me nauseous and if I eat a meal with too much in within about 1 hour I'm on the loo.

I'm an adult so can self police but I'm OK with cheese and small amounts yoghurt. This is quite typical of lots of people who are lactose intolerant, for years I thought it must be something else because cheese is OK.

So I can eat a cheese sandwich no problem but if I have a roast I have to watch out for Yorkshire puddings and mash.

I know it is nothing compared to severe allergies, I'm just making the point that some things you would expect a reaction I don't get one.

Yes Dd is lactose intolerant, diagnosed by an nhs consultant and in her medical notes.

However different types of dairy contain different levels of lactose and she types of dairy she can tolerate small amounts of. But she’s still lactose intolerant and too much or the wrong sort will give her bad tummy cramps, farting, diahorrhea and sometimes vomiting.

[quote SteppedOnBloodyLego]**@dramalamma He's clearly allergic to gluten (vomits when he eats it - always has) but they want proof. the only way they'll get proof is if I can force him to eat gluten every day (which he will vomit up each time) for 6 weeks and then be tested - which will probably still come up negative because he won't have ingested enough gluten to show up because he's vomits it up every time! It's not worth it

Complete nonsense. You are clearly confusing gluten intolerance (aka celiac disease) and wheat allergy. Look it up.[/quote]
Sorry why is @dramalamma confusing coeliac disease (even if she’s called it a gluten allergy) with a wheat allergy?

What she’s said is standard advice when trying to get diagnosed as coeliac on the nhs. Coeliac disease can totally make people vomit. It’s standard advice that you have to eat gluten twice a day for six weeks before an endoscopy for the damage to show up. Otherwise the villi could have healed and you get a false negative.

When Dd was waiting for her endoscopy she was so ill with vomiting every day that she collapsed and was admitted to hospital and put straight on a potassium drip. She was kept in for ten days on a drip and I was told she was chronically malnourished and had been quite close to death due to deranged blood values.

And yes they did the endoscopy while she was an inpatient and had coeliac disease. We’d actually decided 2 days before she collapsed to give up with the nhs referral/diagnosis as we felt we couldn’t put her through it any longer.

Many parents declare allergies but these allergies are often contradicted by the meal choices that they choose ( the allergens of which are clearly displayed on the menus)

Allergies are not always as straightforward as people think when they haven’t experienced them. Both of my twins react badly to dairy on level 1 of the milk ladder. You wouldn’t know it when you fed it to them, but the next day they’d have bleeding nappy rash, awful poos and an eczema flare up. Some kids can eat the first three levels on the milk ladder and then react on the fourth, etc.

One had a severe reaction to scrambled egg. Took him to allergy nurse at the hospital who told me to reintroduce egg baked into things like cake, no reaction at all but must not have lightly cooked egg.

If you’re allergic to peanuts you can usually eat peanut oil as long as it’s refined. Some people can’t eat raw tomato but can eat cooked tomato.

I’m sure some people massively take the piss and they annoy me as it means allergies aren’t taken as seriously. But many times people don’t understand how allergies work.

@CovidStoleTheRainbow - I think you are now being deliberately dense and obstructive yourself. Someone who has worked for Chartwells has already posted on this thread to explain to you that if your child has allergies, they will be provided with their own special menu, not food from the general menu for children without allergies, so why have you posted the general menu on here to try and prove your child can only eat a potato every day?
And stop being self-righteous about your entitlement to free school meals if you are telling them you want your child to have nothing but a potato to eat every day - you must know that is an inappropriate daily diet. Why not try working with them instead of inappropriately asking for a jacket potato from the main menu that has every chance of having been contaminated with dairy products, or soya, or wheat? And why not give them more information on the extent of the less severe allergies and whether medical advice is that these may become more severe, or are linked to the development of further allergies of specific food types? To create a balanced, allergy-free, special menu for your child, the caterer needs to know exactly what they are dealing with to ensure it is safe. It is far harder to design a safe and balanced diet that completely avoids every trace of every single type of food you have listed than to limit certain food types, but not be quite so worried about trace amounts. So, how has your child reacted to the foods you list as causing a less severe reaction and what medical advice have you received on these? Are you just lucky those further listed foods did not cause an anaphylactic reaction?

@SteppedOnBloodyLego - coeliac disease is not the same as gluten intolerance. Coeliac is an autoimmune condition - look it up. Trust me I wish I had a nice easy diagnosis after 8 years but the world doesn’t always work like that. Note I didn’t say he had coeliac disease as I don’t know if he has. Saying gluten allergy is the easiest shorthand for what he has (as it’s not just wheat he reacts to) but of course I’m going to give chapter and verse in my son’s diet to a load of strangers on the internet. I’ll carry on with what I’m doing as a responsible parent if it’s all the same to you.

@dramalamma is there anyway they can diagnose your son with a gluten allergy just on what you've described? There are a few coeliac cases in our family and I suspected my son was too. The pediatrician didn't want to put him through a biopsy etc so gave him an official gluten allergy diagnosis based on his symptoms improving on a gluten free diet. Now we have proof for the school. Once he's older (he was only 5) we can investigate further.

@Puzzledandpissedoff

Does that help?

Not really I'm afraid, because you mentioned every other food as opposed to every other meal

I'd have thought it possible to to provide a choice of "mains" DS can eat, with the veg/salad/jacket/whatever as sides, but the reasons they want proof have already been well covered by others

Rightly or wrongly, the "why should I have to?" thing is likely to bracket you with the ridiculous parents who invent allergies, and I just wonder if that's worth risking when the solution's not hard to come by

What the chuff are you going on about? Meals are food.

How are they supposed to provide the mains with out the allergens?

Strip the coating off the fish?

Suck out the dairy from the tikka masala?

Pick out the spaghetti and leave the meat balls?

I have absolutely no idea what you're going on about?!

Walkaround
Well said

Where a child has allergies then this can involve a separate menu being prepared.

Some posters are being dense saying 'they shouldn't just force feed a child something just because there's no proof' or 'they can only eat a potato'. For many children with allergies it isn't enough to just be given different food to eat; the whole food preparation stage needs to be done separately to avoid cross contamination.

It's entirely reasonable for a company catering for someone with allergies to want clarity on what is an anaphylactic trigger, what gets a strong adverse reaction, what triggers a negative response but is typically fine in smaller amounts.

Covid stole your ability to be rational

@SinkGirl

Many parents declare allergies but these allergies are often contradicted by the meal choices that they choose ( the allergens of which are clearly displayed on the menus)

Allergies are not always as straightforward as people think when they haven’t experienced them. Both of my twins react badly to dairy on level 1 of the milk ladder. You wouldn’t know it when you fed it to them, but the next day they’d have bleeding nappy rash, awful poos and an eczema flare up. Some kids can eat the first three levels on the milk ladder and then react on the fourth, etc.

One had a severe reaction to scrambled egg. Took him to allergy nurse at the hospital who told me to reintroduce egg baked into things like cake, no reaction at all but must not have lightly cooked egg.

If you’re allergic to peanuts you can usually eat peanut oil as long as it’s refined. Some people can’t eat raw tomato but can eat cooked tomato.

I’m sure some people massively take the piss and they annoy me as it means allergies aren’t taken as seriously. But many times people don’t understand how allergies work.

And this is why I get why catering companies want to see the right information in order to ensure that they don’t accidentally make an error, if they are clear on the needs of that individual it makes it so much easier for them to prepare a safe meal.

In the same way my sister carries a medical letter whenever she flies to explain that her peanut reaction is atmospheric so for her sale of nuts onboard would be an issue but for many others with a peanut allergy that wouldn’t provide an issue.

[quote Walkaround]@CovidStoleTheRainbow - I think you are now being deliberately dense and obstructive yourself. Someone who has worked for Chartwells has already posted on this thread to explain to you that if your child has allergies, they will be provided with their own special menu, not food from the general menu for children without allergies, so why have you posted the general menu on here to try and prove your child can only eat a potato every day?
And stop being self-righteous about your entitlement to free school meals if you are telling them you want your child to have nothing but a potato to eat every day - you must know that is an inappropriate daily diet. Why not try working with them instead of inappropriately asking for a jacket potato from the main menu that has every chance of having been contaminated with dairy products, or soya, or wheat? And why not give them more information on the extent of the less severe allergies and whether medical advice is that these may become more severe, or are linked to the development of further allergies of specific food types? To create a balanced, allergy-free, special menu for your child, the caterer needs to know exactly what they are dealing with to ensure it is safe. It is far harder to design a safe and balanced diet that completely avoids every trace of every single type of food you have listed than to limit certain food types, but not be quite so worried about trace amounts. So, how has your child reacted to the foods you list as causing a less severe reaction and what medical advice have you received on these? Are you just lucky those further listed foods did not cause an anaphylactic reaction?[/quote]
Genuinely did not see the person who works for you Chartwells commenting.

I'm not being self righteous at all.
We are only going to be entitled to free school meals until I start my job in 6 weeks, so jacket potato's for a few weeks at ds's request won't kill him.

The last part of your thread very much sounds like you're calling bullshit on my sons less severe allergies?

It's because some parents lie about their children's alleged allergies. Some because they think certain things are unhealthy, some enjoy the fuss and the feeling of being different, some are just completely crazy. I wonder sometimes if it's a form of Munchausens by proxy.

This is from personal experience. I know a child who has to have gluten free food, at considerable extra effort, worry and stress for the kitchen staff. Her Mum also threw a strop at a school event demanding we find gluten free food for her and her 2 children. Except the little girl talks about sometimes having puddings containing wheat when eating out.

Completely mental.

@Firstworddinosaur That’s interesting - I don’t know if I’ve just come across really jobs worth doctors or if that’s just not possible in our area. I’m afraid I’ve taken the easy option (yeah right!) and gone gluten free. To be honest it’s been so long now we’re all used to it and it hasn’t been the right moment yet to upset the status quo but at some point I’ll need to push it ..... just maybe not in the middle of a pandemic!

How are they supposed to provide the mains with out the allergens?

With the mains mentioned they can't, but they can provide alternative mains where there's a good reason to do so
All they're asking for is proper guidance in order to do their best for everyone concerned - I'm not sure why that's such a problem, especially with all the excellent suggestions PPs have made

DS1 had multiple allergies/ intolerances diagnosed at 12m. He was under the dieticians for a couple of years until about 3-4. At the point of discharge, they were satisfied at our efforts to move up the milk ladder, and that he was growing healthily, and let us continue according to DS's needs. There was no up-to-date evidence to present about DS's dietry needs when he started school. It was more complex when he was partially weaned onto his allergens which appeared to be contradictory than when he was fully excluding foods. Fortunately at the point of starting school he could eat reasonably normally, although he's never had the inclination to try things like a glass of milk. If he'd been more sensitive still, I don't know what useful evidence I could have provided as there waa no evidence of where he was at.

There often isn't up-to-date evidence of these types of needs. It doesn't mean that needs are not genuine though.

We would be unable to provide this sort of evidence for my son’s allergy though he is not school age yet. He is not under anyone’s care, not for lack of trying. The consultant had one phone call with us after a year of waiting and agreed he was allergic and discharged him. No testing, no medication. No further contact for advice. He’s developed more allergies since then and we haven’t even sought medical advice because there doesn’t seem to be a point.

@dramalamma yep I totally get it, it's such a relief when you cut gluten and they're not ill all the time.

We are only going to be entitled to free school meals until I start my job in 6 weeks, so jacket potato's for a few weeks at ds's request won't kill him.

Please check. In my LA (and I thought it was nationwide), once a child qualifies for FSM they retain that entitlement until the end of that phase of education but the parents can turn it down if they wish..... none of ours turn it down!

We don’t use Chartwells for our catering, we use another big nationwide company. Our children with allergies actually have special menus adapted to their needs which is why the company need medical information. Eg on fish & chips day, our child with dairy allergy has non breaded fish and the girl with coeliac disease has special gluten free fish fingers. Our boy with egg allergy has different dessert when egg is in the standard desserts. There are rules about food standards in education so offering only a jacket potato every day isn’t allowed.

Give the caterers the info they need and they will probably bend over backwards to give your child a varied healthy menu that will cater to his specific needs - I know ours would.

@BuggerOffAndGoodDayToYou

We are only going to be entitled to free school meals until I start my job in 6 weeks, so jacket potato's for a few weeks at ds's request won't kill him.

Please check. In my LA (and I thought it was nationwide), once a child qualifies for FSM they retain that entitlement until the end of that phase of education but the parents can turn it down if they wish..... none of ours turn it down!

We don’t use Chartwells for our catering, we use another big nationwide company. Our children with allergies actually have special menus adapted to their needs which is why the company need medical information. Eg on fish & chips day, our child with dairy allergy has non breaded fish and the girl with coeliac disease has special gluten free fish fingers. Our boy with egg allergy has different dessert when egg is in the standard desserts. There are rules about food standards in education so offering only a jacket potato every day isn’t allowed.

Give the caterers the info they need and they will probably bend over backwards to give your child a varied healthy menu that will cater to his specific needs - I know ours would.

That's impressive, but certainly not universal. My DS ate a lot of jacket potatoes with beans whilst he was at primary school and had fresh fruit for dessert every day unless I sent something in for him. The (also large, national) company that provided the meals did the minimum required - provide food that wouldn't kill him - but nothing beyond that. In fact a plain jacket with salad was a fairly frequent offering. Not every day its true, but probably once a week on average. I used to send in a stash of those microwaveable pots of beans which the teachers would kindly warm up in the staff room microwave for days when there was no suitable potato topping. They probably weren't supposed to, but I was grateful that they did. Secondary school has been better simply because as it is a big school there is a choice of lunch venues and there's usually something at one of them that he can have. The cashless catering system won't let a child with recorded allergies purchase anything where one of their allergens is listed as an ingredient which is a fairly robust fail safe system but doesn't allow any flexibility for a child who can tolerate cooked cheese but not uncooked. I'm not complaining - it is safe, which is the main thing - but my experience, and that of lots of other allergy parents that I know, is that many school caterers do not bend over backwards at all.

@CovidStoleTheRainbow - I’m doing the exact opposite of calling bullshit on your child’s less severe allergies. I wouldn’t want to take the risk of anaphylaxis in a child already known to have allergies that severe, so would be confused by a list of food types that are in almost all foods provided in mass catering with no clarification on how worried I should be about letting those food types get anywhere near your child. Must all traces be completely avoided and if not, how much exposure is reasonable and what symptoms should staff be alert to if your child is accidentally exposed? Your child’s allergies are not the common nut allergy, or egg allergy, or specific fruit or vegetable allergy, or limited to just eggs and dairy, they are exceptionally wide ranging and, as you have noticed yourself, encompass foods that are in pretty much every single mainstream meal, and any caterer would find that alarming.

@RishiMcRichFace I don't think we're with Chartwells, I understand your point. it's not an allergy though, just intolerance, so GP won't refer for any tests because they say it's not an allergy and just to monitor So what evidence is there to give? GP won't write a letter either (not for lack of me trying). Not sure what the solution is there

@BlueBelle36

We would be unable to provide this sort of evidence for my son’s allergy though he is not school age yet. He is not under anyone’s care, not for lack of trying. The consultant had one phone call with us after a year of waiting and agreed he was allergic and discharged him. No testing, no medication. No further contact for advice. He’s developed more allergies since then and we haven’t even sought medical advice because there doesn’t seem to be a point.

@BlueBelle36 do you have a discharge letter from the consultant stating he has an allergy?