Saturday, September 22, 2007
Hello
Had anyone dealt with school discrimination? My 8 year=old daughter has type I and the elementary school she attends provides aftershool care but refused her placement because she has diabetes. They refund me the fee that I paid and said that they do not have a nurse at the program. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
a concern MOM
I’m so sorry to hear about your challenge with your daughter’s aftercare and unfortunately I have to say it’s not the first time I’ve heard of this happening. It makes me so angry that families have to face challenges like this on top of dealing with diabetes every day. Educating the aftercare and school staff about managing diabetes is always the first place to start. Often decisions are made out of ignorance. So before things become adversarial, I prefer to start with an educational approach, carefully explaining exactly what my child’s needs are and what I would need from the staff of the program to keep my child safe. I imagine at age eight your child can do her own blood sugar checks with just adult supervision. If you have an ally from the school day where I assume there is a plan in place to manage her diabetes, you may want to get this person involved. If you could get your school nurse on board to help train a designated person to monitor your daughter during the time she is in the aftercare program that would probably be the best solution. If the program receives federal funding they must make reasonable accommodations for your daughter. The state of Virginia has some very good policy about training non- nurses in dealing with a child’s diabetes and there was just a successful lawsuit in California forcing the schools to better accommodate children with diabetes. Some good resources about your rights can be found on the American Diabetes Association’s website http://www.diabetes.org/for-parents-and-kids/diabetes-and-the-law.jsp. You may want to start by printing off some of these ADA materials and sharing them with your school principal and the director of the afterschool program. Good luck!
Thanks for taking the time out to reply to my question. I have already contacted the ADA and tehy sent me information regarding training as you said but I am afraid I hit a brick wall. This center is not willing to take the responsibility because they feel they don't have to. I will continue to pursue this because my daughter is only 8 years old and she will need thi stype of service for a long time. Again thank you for your information
rnstart