Diabetes Back to School Checklist

Starting back to school takes a lot of work – educating the teacher and specialist staff (e.g. music, sport, etc) about your child’s needs, putting plans in place, preparing backpacks and much more.

And, will your child’s teacher be responsive and responsible?

Below are some useful guidelines that may help you.

Two Weeks Before School Starts

  1. Obtain reference or training material from JDRF or your local diabetes support chapter, or see diabetes-teacher-education.doc

One Week Before School Starts

  1. Arrange to meet with your child’s home room teacher, and the school nurse if any. Arrange for one-on-one sessions to describe your child’s needs.
  2. Get the home room teacher to read diabetes-teacher-education.doc and ask any questions of you.

The Backpack

We provide a small backpack with everything our daughter needs. Make sure that it is the STAFF who carry the backpack around, NOT the child, as we want your child to be as normal as all the other kids. In the backpack, you need:

  1. Blood test device. Cartridge devices can be easier for teachers and kids to use
  2. Strips for device
  3. Rubber gloves – optional, but can get around those squemish or uneducated about blood products
  4. Jelly beans, jelly babies, honey, glucose tablets or gels
  5. Glucagon kit – in case of emergencies
  6. Copy of action plan (see below)

Action Plan

The Action Plan spells out how your child’s school should care for their diabetes. What time meals are, what to do if a meal is late due to an assembly or other unplanned activity, what to do before sport, etc. Also known as a Diabetes Medical Management Plan (DMM P).

The Action Plan should have a current photo of your child, their age and class name/number, their home room teacher name and phone number, and your emergency contact details. The Action Plan should be provided in two forms – some people work better with text, others with images/flowcharts.

Emergency Plan

The Emergency Plan spells out what to do when things go wrong. It should be posted in the health center and student’s classroom for easy reference (typically alongside information about allergy and asthma sufferers).

Social Justice / Fund raising

Junior schoolers are always on the lookout for worthy causes to raise money for. Check out our sample social justice letter, tailor it for your own child and send it to their social justice or fund raising committee.

How does the Jade App help with back to School?

Jade provides shared situation awareness – whatever your child’s blood sugars, insulin and carbs are at school, you can see from home or work or anywhere in the world. No Dexcom, FreeStyle Libre or CGM required!

Get the Jade App on your phone, your child’s phone and your teacher’s laptop now!

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2021-08-25T21:36:55+00:00