The Medically Fragile Child: Caring for Children with ...

TheMedically FragileChild

Caring for Children with Special Healthcare Needs in the School Setting

Randi Weingarten, President Antonia Cortese, Secretary-Treasurer Lorretta Johnson, Executive Vice President

Copyright ? American Federation of Teachers, afl-cio (AFT) 2009. Permission is hereby granted to AFT state and local affiliates to reproduce and distribute copies of this work for nonprofit educational purposes, provided that copies are distributed at or below cost, and that the author, source and copyright notice are included on each copy. Any distribution of such materials by third parties who are outside of the AFT or its affiliates is prohibited without first receiving the express written permission of the AFT.

Contents

Foreword.....................................................................................................i

Chapter 1 Overview: Children with Special Healthcare Needs....................................1

Chapter 2 The Role of the School Nurse......................................................................9

Chapter 3 The Legal Framework for Providing Care to Children with Special Healthcare Needs...............................................15

Chapter 4 Non-Nursing School Personnel..................................................................31

Chapter 5 Creating a Safe Environment: Protecting Staff and Students....................................................................39

Chapter 6 Collective Bargaining and Workers' Rights...............................................45

Appendices..............................................................................................50

We must advocate for children with special healthcare needs to obtain the best possible education.

Foreword

The presence of children with special healthcare

needs in schools has broadened the responsibilities of teachers, school nurses, paraprofessionals and other school employees. As members of the education team, we struggle to balance our obligation to students and our concern about duties we may be unprepared or legally not allowed to perform.

In 1989, the AFT heard these concerns from our members and responded by creating the Ad Hoc Committee on Healthcare Responsibilities in Special Education. This committee was a collaborative effort of the AFT's educational issues department (AFT Teachers), the Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (now AFT Healthcare), and the AFT's paraprofessional and school-related personnel division (AFT PSRP). The work of this committee generated the first edition of a manual titled The Medically Fragile Child in the School Setting. The AFT's Task Force on Special Education continued to work on these issues, and its recommendations were incorporated in a second edition of the manual.

The third edition sets out to accomplish three goals: first, to educate our members on their roles and responsibilities in relation to children with special

healthcare needs (sometimes referred to as "medically fragile students"); second, to educate our members on their rights as school employees; and third, to outline possible solutions and protections for local unions to pursue on behalf of their members.

The number of children with special healthcare needs in school settings has increased exponentially since this manual's inception. This trend was one of the catalysts for the community schools proposal that we launched at the most recent AFT convention. The AFT faces multiple challenges related to this trend: We must advocate for an environment that would enable these students to obtain the best possible education, ensure our members have access to information that will support all our students, maintain a safe work environment, and protect members rights. We hope this third edition of the manual will meet these challenges.

RANDI WEINGARTEN President

ANTONIA CORTESE Secretary-Treasurer

LORRETTA JOHNSON Executive Vice President

FOREWORD / i

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