Teachers learn to help kids with diabetes
TEACHERS across Victoria will be taught how to help thousands of students with diabetes — including what to do in an emergency — in a landmark program aimed at keeping them healthy and at school.
Education
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TEACHERS across Victoria will be taught how to help thousands of students who have diabetes in a landmark program aimed at keeping them healthy and at school.
The training — to be available to state and independent primary and secondary schools — will assist up to 2500 pupils with Type 1 diabetes.
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It will include advice on what to do in emergencies when children have blood sugar levels which are too high or low.
School support staff will also be trained.
Education Minister James Merlino told the Sunday Herald Sun: “Medical conditions such as Type 1 diabetes should not be a barrier to any students reaching their potential at school.”
“Healthy children learn better, which is why it’s so important that school staff, parents and carers, and diabetes treating teams work together to support students with Type 1 diabetes,’’ he said.
About one in 10 Australians have Type 1 diabetes, which tends to develop in childhood.
Those with the condition cannot produce insulin, which regulates blood sugar levels, and may require daily injections of the hormone.
Experts from Diabetes Victoria, the Royal Children’s Hospital and Monash Children’s Hospital helped develop the new training which will be delivered online so staff don’t have to travel.
It will include advice for school staff on how to talk to students aged three to 18 about their condition and necessary measures to manage it.
Healesville mum Laura Innes, whose nine-year-old daughter Rori was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes several years ago, has helped develop the training program.
Ms Innes said even a minor change in blood sugar levels could affect her daughter’s learning.
“When she is having low or high blood sugar it can impact her ability to focus, see or think,” she said.
“It can be a quite restrictive disease which might mean Rori has to sit out of activities which does happen regularly.
“Sometimes as a result it means that she can feel left out.”
It was good to see schools doing more to help students and their families, Ms Innes said.
“I used to write up my own action plan and would go in once or twice a year to have meetings and train them on how to manage the disease with my daughter,” she said.
“There are a lot of misconceptions (about Type 1 diabetes) but it is very different from other types of diabetes.
“This implementation will bring more awareness into how the disease affects students and provide people in schools with more empathy to help them understand.”
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