Does your primary school have a policy about when they will/won't give prescription medicine?

[JustOneMoreThingMiss]

DS is in Reception. He was prescribed antibiotics at the weekend. The school, while good in many ways, seem to have an aversion to giving you any info in writing/on the website. So I had no idea what they did in terms of giving kids prescription medicine. Asked his (lovely) teacher at drop off, who said take it to the office and fill in a form - office then said they will not give 3x a day medicines, though they do 'make an exception' for 4x a day medicines. They ask that the parent does it at 3.15, or comes in during the day to do it (so no good if you work FT as me and DH do) or that you get afterschool club (not part of the school, they don't have one) to administer it.

My gripe here is not primarily that they don't give the medicine - though that is a pain - but that I have not been able to find this out easily. Do most schools have a prospectus/school information pack that tells you what the school does about giving prescribed medicines? Did you get given this information when your child started school? I just want to know whether my DS's school is behind the curve on this or whether they are all the same!

Our primary will give prescription medicines. It is a pain though. Is there a friend or a relative who can come in to give the medicine?

I think its reasonable to give a 3 times a day medicine at 8.30am, 3.15am and just before bed.

Is your ds well enough for school?

Thanks for the reply ReallyTired. Yes, he's perked up a lot now - Friday night was the worst, took him to walk in centre Sat am. I can't do 3.15pm though as I'm in work and so is DH. So am going to ring afterschool club in a minute and see what they say.

What's been most annoying though, was just not knowing - if I had known this Sat morning I wouldn't even have bothered faffing around at the school, I would have gone straight to afterschool. Did you get told by the school they would give it, you had to bring it in labelled etc? Or is no information given until the time comes when you need it?

Ours will give prescription medicines, and Calpol/similar in certain circumstances (not if the pupil has a temperature, but will if eg post-injury but otherwise fit to attend, as I found out when I had one with a broken wrist in plaster).

The published policy is broadbrush though - it just says medicines will be kept securely by nominated staff member and given in accordance with written instructions. There is no information on whether there are limits on times or frequency, and I've never needed to take any in so haven't found out how it works in practice.

There is no information about our school's medicine policy on the school web site or on the prospectus. Dd is now in Y4 and I have never seen any information about if/how they give medicines. We didn't get anything when she started school and nothing has been volunteered since then. I don't know if this lack of information is common though.

Ours won't. My daughter just finished treatment for leukaemia in September. I never expected any of her chemo to be given by the school ( though most of it was in tablet form), however three times in reception and year one she came into contact with chicken pox and had to take a course of aciclovir to try to prevent her from catching it. This had to be given 5 times a day over a course of 3 weeks. The school refused so I had to go there each day at 12 to give her the midday dose. It was a bloody pain but would have been impossible to give them all outside of school hours as some days she would be taking 15 lots of medication in total most of which came with various food restrictions just adding to the inconvenience.

A school should have an individual health plan for a child with a serious illness/ life limiting condition like labtest daughter. The special school which I used to work at used to give all kinds of medications to the children. (Ritalin or epilsey meds) There is a child with major special needs in dd's class and I believe that he has medication at school has he has a life limiting condition.

I can understand why a school might be fearful of giving chemo, but aciclovir is relatively harmless as a medication

it was in our information pack when they started school and said they could do 4x a day antibiotics if the appropriate forms were completed but they couldn't do 3x ones as it was generally understood that these were ok to be given outside of school hours or words to that effect.

I would assume that if a child had specific medical condition requirements then these would be arranged separately in discussion with the LEA school nurse person.

She has an IEP but they just won't give meds. I only asked when she first came into contact with chicken pox in reception and the teacher went away to check then told me they weren't allowed. I would never expect them to give chemo as I'm too much of a control freak to allow anyone, other than me, to do that. Thankfully my daughter has finished treatment.

I am glad she has finished treatment labtest, hope she has a wonderful and healthy Christmas x

It's generally round here they will give prescribed medication, but not unprescribed. They won't give eye or ear drops, and if it's cream, the child has to administer it themselves.

However dd2 gets migraines and they have agreed to keep ibroprofin for her to take if she feels one coming on.

Thanks periwinkle. Incidentally one of her main chemos, vincristine, is derived from Madagascan periwinkle!

Our prospectus says 'Where absolutely necessary medicines can be administered by the Head Teacher, with written authorisation from the parent.'

But I'm a little surprised that you didn't think - I want to know if they'll give the medication, I'll give the school office a quick ring to ask.

Hi, thanks for all the replies, everyone.

Galena DS had his medicine prescribed Saturday morning, so I couldn't ring before today to find out. Maybe I should have rung at 8am - have never yet tried this so I don't know if they answer calls before school opens. However, if they'd given me an information pack like Periwinkle's, I would have consulted that over the weekend and known in advance what the situation was.

Did many of you get information packs on starting reception? I am if so as we didn't, or only if you count a list of uniform items (but without saying what I later found out - that you can buy a bog standard Asda jumper instead of the school's logoed one if you want and so on) and a copy of the letter from the local authority about fines for term time holidays. I had to ring in in the run-up to DS starting to find out what time school finished as they hadn't mentioned it anywhere - and then got told 3.10, 3.15 and 3.20 by different staff members.

labtest That's so unsupportive and must have been very frustrating for you. I can't believe they wouldn't even give the lower-level meds. Even if they wouldn't give my DS medicine, I would totally understand them making an exception for a child in your DD's position, so very disappointing that the school didn't see it that way. I hope it's all upwards for her from now on.

There actually seems to be quite a split then between schools that do provide this info ahead of time and schools where you only find out when it becomes an issue. I might look at what other local schools do. I am quite frustrated by their unwillingness to provide stuff like this. The school is lovely when you're there but still doesn't have a prospectus (it was 'coming soon' last Jan when we applied) and I had to ask loads of questions to find out about bringing drinks/snacks in, what PE kits was needed and when - all stuff that you could just bung in an info pack and avoid people asking the teacher lots of pointless repetitive questions every morning.