Could I be sacked over this?

[Sweetiexx]

could i be sacked for this?
I work as a cook manager in a school, a child who has an allergy was given a wrong dessert by my kitchen assistant. The child is ok had no reaction.

the school also had another incident regarding this child from the classroom. But the head teacher has said they are going to do an investigation with the governors.

we have had no new information from the school regarding allergies or pictures of the children.
all we had was a teacher come up and pointed this child out. My staff member couldn’t remember the child.
no as the manager could I be sacked because of this?

many thanks

15 years ago they had photos of every child with an allergy up in the classroom, and a folder with the same info in kitchen and dining hall at my dds bog standard primary.
Are you responsible for the processes and procedures to avoid this happening?

What training have you and the team done
What risk assessments are in place and how often are they reviewed ?
sounds like a poor overall culture at the school in terms of risk

As the MANAGER it's your responsibility to endure people are not relying on memory and can't forget because you have other processes in place.
You're more worried about covering your own arse than the lives of young children ?

*ensure

The school I work in the Head Teacher is responsible for making sure there are procedures on place to make sure this doesn't happen. If it did happen, procedures would be reviewed. I can't imagine kitchen staff being sacked over it.

You need to make very clear what you need to have put in place to make sure this never happens again. Hopefully your request will be listened to. I would actually threaten to resign if I wasn't listened to.

Feeding a child their allergen requires a referral to the LADO.

www.bhscp.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/03/LADO-Contact-Threshold-Guidance.pdf

The school should be giving you a picture of the child with information regarding the allergy information. However, the fact you are the Catering Manager, it's your responsibility to make sure the school have given you the information and that all the staff under you, are aware and have read the information. Both the school and yourself have to take responsibility here. The member of staff who gave the child the food, should have spoken up, if they weren't sure who the child was. The child didn't have a reaction, and the school are partly responsible, so I doubt you'd be sacked. The procedures regarding allergies need an overhaul, and reporting/information and knowing who the child is important.

You SHOULD be held responsible because you have said

• the team need to remember that X has an allergy
• the team probably won't remember that or who X is
• because the school won't let us put pictures on the wall, we just won't have a system of remembering who X is.

If you were competent at your job and bothered about the kids welfare you would have either

• thought up another way of remembering who X is
• or written a stiff letter/email to the head saying "we need a system to remember these kids, maybe A or B. If you don't want A or B give us another system that works before a kid dies. It isn't safe for us to be working without this, and we won't"

The fact you did neither of these things, and even more that you are looking for a way out of blame now, rather than admitting how badly you've messed up and looking to make sure it doesn't happen again, shows you definately aren't responsible enough for the role.

There needs to be a double check system in place for allergy kids.

I'm not saying that the OP is a troll but it's one of those threads that you wish really wasn't true.

I am astonished at the attitude displayed in her/his posts. The lack of understanding of the role, responsibilities, the schools responsibilities, the policies / legislation and the lack of care towards the child with the allergy. The OP posts show a negligent, lazy approach + a lack of critical thinking.

Hopefully this is a wake up for both you and the school. A child could have died, and you would be hauled in front of an inquiry. You need to get serious about sorting this out. You're the manager, go to the Head and tell them the actions you need to take to ensure this doesn't happen again.

How do they order the food they want, there seems several areas this can go wrong, between the child/parent ordering the food (online/in the classroom) and a list to cross check those with allergies and meal and the serving of the food - ideally this should have been stopped before the child even got to the serving hatch.

If you haven't had the relevant info you normally have I'd say the slt have to take some responsibility here.

tell them you and your team cannot safely serve if you dont have the required Information and docs you usually have and mean it. If it gets to lunch and you don't have the info, tell slt they will have to serve the children.

At the school I worked at...
The parent is responsible for telling school office about allergies.
school office gathers medical evidence from parent and passes to kitchen manager
Kitchen manager then responsible for making sure child does not receive problem food
Parent responsible for informing office of changes
And so it begins again. Reviewed every year instigated by office.

The school lays down these procedures agreed with kitchen manager.

By the way part of the info school office gives to kitchen manager includes photo. This info also goes to class teacher and on a list in office to go on school trips.

This is the thinking that leads to this, where allergies aren’t taken seriously.

my child does not have an anaphylactic reaction. She could eat the wrong desert and be apparently fine. The projectile vomiting, stomach cramping and diarrhoea tends to start a couple of hours later- once she’s home. That requires medication or it continues for 24-48 hours, after which she then has to deal with nasty acne for a couple of weeks.

with the medication she now has much less time off school and can often go back the next day if we catch it early enough. From a lunchtime assistant pov, even a teacher, it would seem there was no reaction.

not all allergies are immediately collapse and die. Just because a child isn’t immediately unwell doesn’t mean they don’t have an allergy. Coeliac, for example has longer term effects if the child continues to be exposed to gluten.

if someone says they are allergic, believe them. Whether you see them react or not.

At my child's school any child with allergies has a lanyard issued to them before they enter the hall which lists all of their individual allergies and they have a red plate. There is also a photo of each child with allergies from each class that is checked before food is served. They also choose their food in advance if they have an allergy so it can be double checked. You need to tighten up your policies before a child is seriously affected.

OK OP, so I think your argument for not being sacked/disciplined is this:

• Your safety system relies on you being provided with a booklet detailing students and their allergies, from someone else within the school. You had requested this earlier this term but been told it "was not ready". (Do you have an email detailing this request? If so, keep it - it might be useful. If not, try to remember when you asked and who you asked, and make a note of this if you haven't already).

• In the absence of the booklet, WHICH YOU HAD REQUESTED, you did the best you could by pointing out the child to your staff member and telling them not to give the child food containing certain allergens. Your staff member, however, forgot this.

I agree that you cannot monitor every single thing your staff members do - you rely on them following instructions. Expecting them to do it from memory is a big ask, but given that you had requested the booklet. (Just once? Or more than once?) and been told it wasn't ready, you did the best you could. You are not allowed to create and display a poster showing photos of the children and their allergens, so without the booklet you have to rely on memory.

Based on all that, it's not your fault. I think your staff member could be disciplined for this possibly, but could reasonably argue that being asked to do this from memory is too challenging - if a child changes their hairstyle or whatever it can be difficult to recognise them.....

The booklet is a good solution and has I assume been effective in safeguarding children before. So I would think that, if anybody is to blame, it's the person who has not produced the booklet. Either the person who makes it, if they just hadn't bothered getting it done on time, or possibly their line manager, if they KNEW it wasn't ready and were telling them to prioritise other actions.....

Given the different opinions on this thread though, this is clearly not obvious to everyone (though I have worked in management and safeguarding in schools and I have to say it DOES seem clear to me. But interpretations can vary). I would therefore strongly advise you to inform your union if you have one, to get everything written down ASAP, and not to go to meetings about this alone, especially if you lack confidence in being able to defend yourself clearly, etc.

And again, I think it's a point of vital importance that you asked for the booklet and were not given it. So if you can prove that with an email, or even if a colleague witnessed you asking, that is even better.

I understand your argument, but as a catering manager, I would expect the OP to have done more than ask once for the booklet, if she knew that there were no other reliable measures in place to protect children with allergies. Asking once simply isn't good enough - to be able to put forward a proper defence, she would need to evidence that she had asked for the information repeatedly, flagged up the risks associated with not having it and implemented additional measures on a temporary basis to mitigate that risk...or at the very least alerted senior management to the fact that there were no additional measures that could be implemented.

Of course, the person responsible for producing the booklet must also take responsibility for their part in the issue, but that doesn't absolve the OP of all responsibility. We are talking about a mistake that could have potentially killed a child. It just isn't going to wash if the OP just says, "well, I did ask". Where is the accountability in that?

The HT must also take some responsibility here, as well, because to manage allergies effectively, you need a whole school approach and a culture in which everyone takes their individual responsibilities seriously, and that clearly wasn't in place in this scenario. But the OP was nonetheless responsible for the food coming out of that kitchen and she absolutely should have ensured that appropriate procedures were in place to protect children from being served food that would put them at risk.

I have a son with allergies and I'm on the board of governors at his school. A teacher gave him chocolate cake once. No consequence. There have been at least 3 slip ups in cafeteria no consequence. They have allergy bands for kids with allergies and photos of every child in the kitchen

I don't think you'll be sacked but this is a learning opportunity for better procedures. I'm sure you know that when it comes to allergies there is often no room for error. Imo the person passing on the food to the child should have checked if they weren't sure. Nothing but being 100% sure is good enough in these circumstances. It's just too risky. A lucky escape. Everyone can learn from it. Thankfully no harm done.

You don’t seem to grasp as a manager it’s your responsibility

if they haven’t given you the info it your job to chase and sort it

Relying on someone remembering is not enough

There needs to be more than one line of defence

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model

Sorry to quote my long post AND a long reply - I can't seem to quote sections on the app.

But yes, to be honest I do agree with you - just asking the school receptionist once in passing would not really cut it - she would ideally have pursued it doggedly and taken it to whoever is in charge of safe guarding if necessary.

There can obviously be issues to do with the culture of the school which can make chasing this sort of thing challenging for staff. If for example a member of SLT or even the head themself told her it was not ready and to stop pestering for it and to just get on, that does put a different complexion on things.

I'm assuming that, though catering manager holds responsibility for allergy catering in the kitchen on a day to day basis, overall accountability for this lies with head of safe guarding and/or the head? It would in places I have worked....

So the question I would be asking, if I was looking into this, is, did the head/head of safeguarding know that the booklet had not been produced yet? I think if OP had made them aware of this and they took no action, then she is a lot less culpable. If they didn't know, then yes it is on her to make them aware that the main safeguarding procedure for protecting allergic students is not currently in place.

I see what you are saying, but I think we need to lay off on OP for being scared her job might be at risk. For all we know her own kids rely on her income for housing, food etc, and she wants to keep THEM safe by continuing to earn a living.

It's natural for anyone to care deeply about losing their job, especially in the current economic climate - it doesn't make her some heinous individual. Perhaps she is not coming across the best, but she is probably hugely panicking......