Ellie Goldberg

Healthy Schools Consultant

Why Students Need Advocates

Students with chronic health conditions, no matter what their health status or degree of impairment, face common obstacles to managing their health at school:

• A chronic health condition affects every aspect of a student’s day.

• Schools vary enormously in their ability and willingness to serve students with chronic health conditions.

• Without some extra thought, information exchange, communication and planning, school can be an unfriendly, hazardous place where students face unacceptable risks to their health, safety, learning and development.

• Discriminatory practices and unsafe school conditions endanger and disenfranchise children, waste precious education and health care dollars, and add to the already enormous health care, social and economic burdens on families, communities and the nation as a whole.

The Issues

• Lack of school health services and qualified school nurses

• Inadequate school nurse staffing patterns

• Extreme variations in standards of care and policies

• Delegation by default

• Lack of information exchange and cooperative planning among families, health care providers and schools

• Lack of reliable access to medications

• Lack of appropriate risk reduction

• Restrictions on developmentally-and age-appropriate self-care options

• Lack of peer and teacher education

• Lack of appropriate emergency procedures

• Lack of coordination of student’s health and educational goals

• Fear of medication

• Fear of liability

• Ignorance of Section 504

• Poor documentation for decision makers and policy makers

• Poor indoor air quality and poor occupational health and safety practices

Pat Howey

Children with disabilities Advocate

The quality of an education a child with disabilities gets is totally dependent on the skill of the parent as an advocate.

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