i’m not new to type 1. but i’m new to my daughter who was just diagnosed going back to school anything i need to do before she go back.??
Start here:
http://www.diabetes.org/living-with-diabetes/parents-and-kids/diabetes-care-at-school/
Then ask me every question that comes to your mind. I’ve fought a pretty tough battle with my daughter’s public middle school and the school district and I’d be happy to help you problem solve!
Rose
i worry a lot about her & her homeroom
Teacher won’t let anyone keep anything with sugar in her room. & we got her a nice diabetes purse with stuff for her lows & some of it is Skittles & Starburst. i did look at the stuff on the link & print out a lot of stuff off of it. one was the Diabetes Medical Management Plan. & buying her a nice diabetes purse gets eric mad it not fare she gets something nice. & i have a Drawstring Backpack Bag for my stuff.
With a sound 504 plan in place, your daughter will be allowed to have access to all food needed to treat lows, among many other accommodations. You may want to check out the topics covering 504 plans on the Children with Diabetes Forum:
we working on a Diabetes Medical Management Plan for her. but i’m still looking at 504 plans.
& I’m going love the Nurse at her school. just wish there was something like it when eric go back to College if i let him go back.
In many ways, I consider the 504 plan to be as important as, if not more important, than the medical orders.
RE Eric, he needs to look into his ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) accommodation rights, and meet with someone at his university’s Students with Special Needs/Disabilities Office (or whatever his particular university calls it.)
i have everthing for my school ready to go.i have a appt with the person about the 504 & Diabetes Medical Management Plan.
we have a Diabetes Medical Management Plan for her. & a sound 504 plan in place. just hope i don’t got to fight a battle like you had to.
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Wow, Amanda, you accomplished this quickly; I’m very impressed! Let us know how your daughter’s back to school experience goes.
so far she been back for 4 days. & her homeroom teacher won’t let her test eat or drink test her BG at her seat. there is a lot more she won’t let her do. & it says she can do it in her 504.
Her homeroom teacher either needs to be educated or fired!
The accommodations afforded to your daughter via her 504 plan are backed by the Americans with Disabilities Act. We’re talking FEDERAL LAW!!!
If I were you, I’d make a telephone call to your school district’s administrative office and inform them that one of their teachers is breaking a federal law on a daily basis and endangering your child’s life…
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I to talk to someone at the administrative office about it. she says she was going talk to her about it.
Here’s a hard truth about the ADA, Section 504 & real-life enforcement. In theory, schools can lose their federal funding for violating the laws. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) is charged with enforcing these laws, but a simple online search will show there are very few cases that led to an actual loss of funding. The fact is, unless the school’s violation is severe, at most they’ll get a stern warning & an opportunity to make things right. Of course the outcome also depends on how aggressive the regional OCR office is.
Having faught many battles with my daughter’s school, I can tell you the best weapon you can have is someone on the school staff in your corner. Find one person…the nurse, a teacher, a principal or even a member of administration…that will go to bat for you. Knowing the laws helps, but having an ally on the inside is a must. Stand tough, but don’t be combative. Always keep the lines of communication open.
Many situations with teachers result from a lack of understanding of the need for self-care in Type 1. You would be surprised how many teachers don’t even know what’s in the 504 plan. In your situation I would have asked for a meeting with the teacher or at the very least, an email exchange or phone call. I would only go to administration if the teacher continued to be uncooperative.
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That being said, my experience, unfortunately, has evolved into an adversarial relationship with my daughter’s school principal, nurse, and school district. And this is NOT because I didn’t do the following: become extremely knowledgeable about my then-11-year-old daughter’s T1D; educate myself about the ADA and 504 plans; develop an excellent rapport, establish open lines of communication (including having an ally on the inside), maintain ongoing non-adversarial communication with my daughter’s teachers, school nurse, principal, office staff, etc., including meeting with everyone in person and providing them with written materials (which later included copies I made myself which I put in new, clearly labelled three-ring binders of her insulin pump manual and Dexcom manual); and offer to meet with everyone either in a group or one-on-one to review things, answer questions, and address any concerns anyone might have. Things could not have been better. Then a new nurse came on board and all that changed. I sought out this new school nurse, had quite a few friendly and open conversations with her via telephone, and met with her face-to-face at which time I provided her with information in writing (which included among many other things a sheet containing my name, home address, work address, mobile number, office number, my then-husband’s mobile number, my T1D daughter’s mobile number, my adult daughter’s mobile number, and my son-in-law’s mobile number) before the school year even began. Things continued to go well for the first half of the school year and well into the second half of the school year. Then, for reasons I still do not understand, I came home from work one evening to find my then 12-year-old daughter in tears, telling me that the school nurse “yelled” at her that day, saying that I never returned her calls, “blew her off”, kept her blood sugar too low, and didn’t take good care of her diabetes. At this point, I’d like to interject that when my daughter was diagnosed, she was nowhere near being in DKA (the highest BG she had at diagnosis and during her hospitalization was 300-something). I am a physician and couldn’t help but notice that my daughter was drinking excessive amounts of water and peeing like there was no tomorrow. I had her father bring her to her pediatrician the next morning with written instructions to check her BG and her urine. (I asked her father to take her because I already had many patients scheduled to see myself that day.) The pediatrician told her father something along the lines of “There’s no way she has diabetes; she’d look very sick and she doesn’t look sick at all.” After my daughter and her father left the pediatrician’s office, I suspect she must have had second thoughts after remembering that I am a physician and wouldn’t have asked my daughter’s father to drag her in to see her pediatrician for nothing, and she changed my daughter’s labs orders to STAT. Before my daughter and her father even arrived back home, the pediatrician called me to say that I was right, my daughter’s BG was elevated and she had small ketones, that she had already arranged for direct admission to our state’s renowned children’s hospital, that I should pack a bag for my daughter and myself, and go directly to the admissions desk at the children’s hospital. I never left my daughter’s side during her hospitalization and by hospital day 2, I had already contacted our health insurer to obtain coverage for an insulin pump. By day 3, I had decided on which pump I wanted for her and was looking into CGMs. Since my daughter’s diagnosis on January 24, 2014, I have not had a full night’s sleep (with the exception of two summer’s worth of diabetes camp [a total of 10 overnights]) because I “micromanage” my daughter’s BGs in an attempt to keep her between 75 and 130, and because her father has refused to help manage our daughter’s T1D since her diagnosis. I set up Dexcom SHARE the moment I could get my hands on this wonderful system and to this day obsessively check her BG while I am at work, remaining in communication via text with my daughter throughout the day to keep on top of her BGs. With the exception of when she was initially diagnosed, my daughter’s A1C has never been above 6.8, and if memory serves, her A1Cs have been in the 5’s quite a few times. I have enlisted the assistance of Gary Scheiner’s Integrated Diabetes Services (and have had the honor and privilege of speaking with THE MAN himself twice). I have, I admit defensively, listed all these facts to illustrate that I am far from being negligent concerning my daughter’s diabetes care. Yet my daughter, after having had the previously referred-to conversation with her school nurse, began asking me if she was going to be taken from me and put into foster care “where no one will know how to take care of my diabetes.” Needless to say, I became alarmed as to why the school nurse was saying these things to my daughter because we had been communicating regularly (and I thought effectively). When I arrived at work early that Monday morning, the first thing I did was to telephone the school nurse to try to figure out where all these things my daughter was saying were coming from, as this sounded so out of character for a school nurse with whom I had had, up until this point, an open and solid relationship. She did not answer, and I left her a message to contact me at her earliest convenience. No sooner had I hung up the phone, it rang. It was my husband, telling me that a CSD (Children’s Services Department) worker had just come to the door and wanted to speak with me about my daughter’s diabetes care.
I am going to take a little break now, because writing this is leaving me feeling a little upset. I will finish the saga of my family’s nightmare experience with “the system” later…
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I’m very sorry you’ve had to go through such an ordeal, & I sincerely hope you’ve informed both the ADA (diabetes association, not the law) & the OCR. While I have no doubt my daughter’s school at least considered reporting me (probably multiple times), they also knew we had already contacted an attorney & were proceeding under his guidance. That fact alone bought us a lot of leeway. I’m sure it also helped that the school was aware we had contacted the local media, & we’re in the process of being interviewed for an in - depth article on T1 care in schools.
That said, situations as serious as yours, or even mine, are in the minority. Most schools are quite reasonable & do provide reasonable accommodations & very good care. Please don’t take that as me downplaying your situation. Without going into all the details, let me just say that I completely understand how difficult schools can make things. My life was a living hell for the first year after my daughter’s dx, entirely because of a school nurse who was uninformed & uneducated yet convinced she was an expert in T1D, & a school principal who preferred delegating her duties as 504 coordinator to the nurse. The end result was my daughter was the first student in our district to ever have a 504 plan for diabetes.
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We need a hugs button!
so i thought i let you know what is going on. her homeroom teacher is now being educated. & she can do test eat or drink test her BG at her seat. & everything it says she can do in her 504. i had to go to the Associate Superintendent & he was not a happy about what was going on. & now her school nurse will check in on here.
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we need a hug button.
I’m so happy to hear that things are going better for you and your daughter!
Congrats on not just taking up the role of advocate for your daughter but actually instigating positive changes. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy. I’m glad things rolled your way this time!