A mom of a recently diagnosed kiddo just sent me an email this morning asking for the straight scoop on several aspects of caring for her child at school. It’s a shame that the information newly diagnosed families need isn’t neatly packaged - something I guess we need to do a better job of on our mygluco.com community site. I shared the following with her and then thought I might as well post it in the hopes that it could set off a wave of energy by the larger community to get behind this gap. We’re happy to manage the info and an immediate home is available for it at any number of our web properties including cgmscentral.com. If there is enough interest we can certainly establish a few pages or even a new site dedicated to this topic. Here’s my two cents on the matter keeping in mind that this family lives in Texas (similar legislation exists in 13 states on my last count).

Mom:

“I spoke with you this summer when my son was first diagnosed with type 1. You seem very knowledgeable about school and diabetes so if you don’t mind I have a few questions for you.

My son was early diagnosed this summer so he has some insulin still working from time to time it seems. Being in my care this summer I was able to watch his trends for the day/week, meals and activity and use my best judgment to take care of him. His first A1c came back 6.7- we were all ecstatic! School started yesterday and we moved, first day in a public school with diabetes. I have already noticed in the past week with meetings with staff there is a lot of red tape!

1) Do you recommend 504 filing?

2) What are the students basic rights without filing that- can they check blood sugar in class? can you change their medical plan ongoing or do you have to always get documentation from DR?

Any advice/help would be greatly appreciated. I am feeling like my hands are tied somewhat and we were starting off this summer so strong building his independence.

Thank you, (name withheld)”

My response:

* it’s best if 504 is constructive vs. confrontational.

* yes a 504 in the public school should be viewed as a formal plan (a good thing to have regardless)

* how it gets implemented depends on your specifics.

* There is a law in Texas passed in 2005 (Texas Diabetes Care in School Act) which specifies your child’s rights to have a school nurse and trained lay supporters to help him.)

* The GlucoMON and/or cell phone text messaging can be very useful for helping your child in school.

* Borrow from other family’s experiences and use their 504s as precedent but tailor them to your needs as much as possible. I think you are on the type1 support email loop?

* Darby (my daughter) has never had a 504 since she goes to a small private school where that is not enforced but they have been very cooperative. Regardless we still have a plan in place.

* Avoid giving your son too much independence as he will need your close supervision and participation (and the school personnel’s) until he is at least 16. Below that age kids simply are not capable of applying the problem solving knowledge they are picking up along the way.

PS - my daughter also just started a site at glucokidz.com (with my supervisory oversight). This might be of interest to your family and the people who help him with his diabetes.

Let me know if this is helpful and if we should expand this information or rather perform a consolidation/index of too many valuable nuggets scattered about the Web.

Last 5 posts by Kevin

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 12:17 pm and is filed under School Day Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.