My four year old daughter will be attending a full time pre-Kindergarten program in the fall. I would like to know if you have any suggestions or possibly an outline on how to go about training the staff on how to care for my daughter, who is on a pump. Also, how do I find out if we have the right to have a nurse or some other medical personnel be in contact with the school throughout the year to assist with training and administering insulin? The pre-Kindergarten program does have government funding. Do you think a 504 plan would be necessary at this stage?

Section 504, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act require institutions that receive federal funding, such as public schools, to provide services and modifications to your daughter in order to meet her medical needs and, also, so that she may fully and safely participate in all school-sponsored activities. I highly recommend that you take the following steps to prepare for your daughter’s entry into school:

Review materials found on the ADA’s school web pages on School Discrimination and call 1-800-DIABETES to request a free packet of information.

Use the ADA’s Sample Diabetes Medical Management Plan and work with your child’s health care provider to plan your daughter’s diabetes care regimen for the school environment.

Set up a meeting with the school principal, school nurse, other personnel to review the plan and to decide how your daughter’s needs will be met. Develop a 504 plan (again, ADA has a sample plan that you can easily customize for your child) that outlines how needs will be met.

The school is responsible for providing trained personnel who will be able to meet your daughter’s needs. You can work with the school to coordinate the training, but it is the school’s responsible to train key personnel. You, of course, will need to make sure appropriate school personnel know how to meet your daughter’s individual needs. Some resources for training: pump companies, local diabetes health care professionals, local rescue squad personnel, and I strongly recommend that the trainers use the ADA’s school training modules as the foundation of its training. These PowerPoint modules may be downloaded from Diabetes Care Tasks At School: What Key Personnel Need To Know. There’s also a glucagon training video that may be downloaded from this page as well.

Hope this helps and all the best in the upcoming school year.

CJ