Education: Children with Diabetes

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Young of Old Scone]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, on his dextrous maiden speech, which I suppose is an appropriate term for someone who bears the name of a batsman. He is of course steeped in the history and politics of the Conservative variety. Before he came to your Lordships’ House, he was instrumental in writing a history of 175 years of the Carlton Club and 80 years of the Conservative Research Department. I am sure that his historical perspective on politics will come in useful in these days of new experiments in government. As the noble Lord said, the Conservative Research Department was the cradle in which many illustrious Conservative Members of your Lordships’ House and the other place cut their teeth. I thank the noble Lord on behalf of your Lordships and on your behalf, if I may, wish him a fulfilling time in this House.

I also thank the noble Lord for cutting his maiden teeth on an important issue regarding diabetes. I of course declare an interest, which has already been revealed by other noble Lords, in that I am the chief executive of Diabetes UK. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for initiating this important debate and for his kind words about Diabetes UK, and I thank other noble Lords who have spoken and who will contribute on this heart-rending issue; 20,000 children under 15 have type 1 diabetes, another 1,400 have type 2 diabetes and an increasing number have both types. Noble Lords have given us many statistics and told heart-rending stories, and although many children every day enjoy a full school life, others struggle with control of their condition, without having to deal with the other disadvantages that other noble Lords have mentioned.

Every child with diabetes should be entitled to the full opportunities of education and not be dependent on parents, many of whom, in these straitened times, simply cannot afford to give up work. I want briefly to add my voice to calls for what is needed to allow that to happen. There should, in particular, be an end to inadequate and variable levels of funding for support in schools. If statementing is inappropriate for these children, what mechanism is? There needs to be more access to diabetic teaching assistants and to proper education for teachers, and fellow pupils, to gain an understanding of diabetes and other support that pupils need from time to time.

Can the Minister assure us that the Government will put clear and specific duties on schools and local authorities to ensure continuity of care, in order that children with diabetes can benefit from a proper education? We need an end to the postcode lottery. I hope that there is no increased use of the phrase which struck terror into my heart when I was in conversation about the postcode lottery in healthcare—that this was “no longer a postcode lottery but postcode democracy”. I hope that the excuse of decisions being made on a local basis is not used to support very uneven standards of care and support for these children in schools. I ask the Minister to ensure that all schools be required to have a medical policy to define how they support the health needs of children with long-term conditions; there are more than 1 million children with long-term conditions in schools. There needs to be clarity of responsibility for funding support for children with diabetes in school and an end to the ping-pong between health and education authorities, which are both anxious to pass responsibility for support for these children backwards and forwards. There needs to be clarity on who is responsible and who can be held responsible.

Ideally, we would like to see a full-time qualified nurse for each secondary school and for each cluster of primary schools to help support children with diabetes. Also, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, we need an individual healthcare plan for each child that is prepared jointly between the child, the parents, the doctors and the teachers, and regularly updated. I hope the Minister can tell us how appropriate healthcare can be assured in educational settings, because it is not just about supporting these very vulnerable and often heavily challenged children in their school lives. It is also about reducing the long-term financial costs of the condition to the NHS, reducing the adverse economic costs and emotional impacts on families, and ensuring that these children have a less tough time than they currently do, as well as achieving physical and economic well-being later in life.