Severe nut allergy and school - advice pls

[shoppingbagsundereyes]

My friend's ds has a severe nut allergy. He starts school in sept and the head has told her today the school does not and will not have a nut free policy. Is there anything she can do about this?
Am surprised because even my ds' useless school automatically went nut free when a little girl with nut allergy started there

Might be worth looking at disability discrimination act for a quote about making reasonable adjustments. As you say lots of other schools do nut-free environment without fuss or difficulty. PWP might also be helpful.

you might want to repost on the allergies board.

afaik, there are 2 schools of thought - the nut-free environment one, and the 'it actually makes it more dangerous, as everyone gets complacent if there is a blanket ban' one.

lots of people htink that everyone being aware, and actually managing the issue (and not automatically creating a nut-free environment) is a better solution than trying to control it all, as that way there is more that might be overlooked.

has the head said what the school will do to manage the issue? they must have policies in place, even if they are not to your friend's liking.

If you look on the allergy boards there are lots of discussions about this all the time. My DS has a nut allergy and the school are supposedly nut free, but people do put nut products in lunch boxes sometimes. My DS is also allegic to eggs fish and sesame. - badly. They are not prohibited in school.
You manage. You teach the child they must never eat others food, and about hand washing and keeping away from others food, you give the school the anti histamines and epi-pens and hope all will be well.
School used an epi-pen once on DS. We never found out what he had reacted to.
I have also had calls where his lips and face have swollen apparently from no-where mid afternoon. We gave anti histamine and I took him home.

Its difficult, but life is not allergen free. You just have to do the best you can

I have a nut allergy and I am/was a teacher in a school with no ban.

I did have at least two reactions whilst I was there, in both cases because someone had eaten a peanut butter sandwich in a classroom I was then teaching in. Didn't matter that the sandwich was now gone, I still started swelling up! Obviously that is more likely in secondary school when children buck the rules and eat all over the place, but they would need to be careful.

I certainly think she needs to push to have one table or area of the dining room designated nut free so there's no danger of anything being left behind that might harm him.

Thanks all, really interesting. Will pass on

I think it must be hard for the school to "police" a ban. Apart from ensuring that no one takes nut products into school - which would also apply to teachers and any visiting staff, there is the risk from traces of nut carried in on clothing and hands if nuts are consumed at home - and I can't see how they can actually manage that.

The school I work in is nut free. We have signs on the front door stating this. One of our children has a very severe reaction to nuts. We don't use any shampoo/body washes/sun screen with coconut or almond oil in them either.

One thing to be careful of is glue sticks (not Pritt) some of the other ones (supermarket own brand etc) use nut oil in them. A girl in my DDs class had a reaction once.