WHEN DELIVERING A DUTY OF CARE TO TWO PUPILS BECOMES FRAUGHT WITH DIFFICULTY

 A SUMMARY OF THE SITUATION

Mary Hare is an outstanding school for the deaf. Occasionally it has the privilege of educating pupils with both hearing impairment and sight impairment. On those occasions it works with the Local Authority and key Charities like SENSE and, more recently, the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association to ensure effective plans are put in place.  For the first time ever a conflict of need has occurred between the use of a guide dog and another pupil's very serious allergy problem.  Compromises to manage this affect both pupils. In particular, the pupil with sight impairment cannot have the support of her guide dog for the for less than a total of an hour and a half during the whole working week: on two occasions when she takes lunch in the dining room (2x 30minutes) and on one occasion when the pupil attends assembly (1x 15 minutes). At a meeting held on the 11th of October, convened to address the issues raised by the family, the situation and these compromises were reviewed and the plans were endorsed by two representatives of the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and one representative of the Local Authority who attended the meeting along with the family. Sadly an hour or so after the meeting the parent of the pupil issued a complete rejection of the outcome of this meeting. The school continues to work with all parties to try to meet the needs of both pupils in so far as it is able to do so in the circumstances.

Tony Shaw
Principal
7/11/11

A FULL STATEMENT

Mary Hare School is aware that we are being accused of discrimination against one of our students who is deaf/blind(1).  The pupil has recently been provided with a guide dog, to ensure her safe mobility and the school has been working hard to accommodate her needs.   We are also aware that the needs of another student who is affected because he must avoid dogs are being misrepresented and dismissed.  He has a current medical diagnosis of hyper sensitivity to allergens and in particular to the allergens from animals, including dogs. He uses a range of prescribed medications to manage his conditions which may require both him and the school to have to hand the means of dealing with anaphylactic shock.

Mary Hare exists to educate and support 200 pupils and students, all of whom have a severe disability.  Normally, we never discuss any individual, but we have concluded regretfully that we must now put forward the facts about what we have been trying to achieve.

Mary Hare has an equal duty of care to both students, and a duty to ensure that any adjustments affecting the use of a guide dog are reasonable and proportionate.   We have done this to the satisfaction of the experts whom we consulted, including the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, who support the student and her guide dog, and of the expert official from her local authority.  Our legal advisers also agree that we have made a proportionate response to the situation.

Very simply, the solution has involved re-timetabling and changes of class locations to avoid use of the same rooms, and two restrictions on the movements of the guide dog.   These restrictions involve the hall used for weekly assembly and the main dining hall.

The expert medical advice has been that if the dog enters either room, the other pupil cannot use them.  So for the 15 minutes of assembly, the guide dog stays in a side room, very close to the sixth-form seats where the deaf/blind student would sit.  This was approved by the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association.

The other pupil with allergies is a boarder.  He has to use the dining room for 21 meals a week, and so the guide dog cannot enter it.  The deaf blind student uses the hall for two lunches a week.  However, there is an adjacent small dining room which shares the main entrance to the dining hall, and which has a separate door into the dining hall near the food counters.  The arrangement is for the deaf/blind student to leave her guide dog in the smaller room while she collects her food, and then return. The school undertook to encourage other pupils to use the small room to promote a welcoming situation.  This solution was also approved by the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association.

In total, these expert-approved compromises would separate the deaf blind student from her guide dog for less than two hours of her school week.

Last month (October) there was a meeting at the school attended by the family of the deaf/blind child, officials from the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and the local authority representative.  The suggested solution was discussed, and everybody walked round the locations involved.  It then appeared that the school’s solution had been agreed unanimously, but subsequently we were told that this had been rejected.

The expert officials stand by their approval.  The local authority official wrote last week that “...the school have made reasonable adjustments and that in the areas where they have not been able to allow the guidedog, the school are acting proportionately to ensure the health of the other pupil.”

Mary Hare School is very distressed that there is now unhappiness over these arrangements, but we believe we are doing all we can to fulfil our duty of care to both students.  We have said throughout that we will take advice from any expert agency or authority to ensure we can fulfil our duty of care to both students in the best way possible. If we can find even better ways of doing this - for both students - we will.

What we will not do is contradict expert medical advice on the management of the boy’s risks; or deprive another pupil of their guidedog for a moment longer than is reasonable to protect the boy..

November 2011
Mary Hare