Many children attend schools in Northern Ireland with various medical conditions and needs.
In the vast majority of cases, their needs can be met in schools without having their names recorded on the Special Educational Needs Register, or have their needs met at the early stages of the Code of Practice. Just because a child has a medical need does not mean they will also have a special educational need.
General advice for schools and parents is to liaise with their local Health and Social Care Trust professionals for information and guidance relevant to individual medical needs. This can include support for children with Diabetes, or those children needing help with a toileting programme for example.
For some pupils, it is necessary to establish a Health Care Plan so that medical needs can be managed in schools.
The Department of Education has published guidance to assist schools in supporting pupils with medication needs, and in particular, to provide sound protocols to enable these medication needs to be appropriately managed.
The guidance can be downloaded below:
Further information and advice, including forms from the Guidance are available from the Department of Education website. The link below takes you to the relevant pages:
The EA’s Pupil support service -SENIS (Medical) team will be able to help and assist you with more information.