How to talk to your child’s school team about incontinence

If your child attends school, you may be wondering how to collaborate with your child’s school team to support their continence. This video gives some of the highlights from our guide, Best Practices in School-Based Toilet-Learning & Continence, which is below.

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Best Practices in School-Based Toilet-Learning and Continence

A full transcript of the video appears below.

Hi, my name is Tammy Willey, and I’m a family resource consultant with the Vermont Continence Project. Today’s topic is How to talk to your child’s school team.

The first step is to identify your resources or point person at school. So that could be your school nurse, that could be your school occupational therapist, maybe your teacher, a special educator or educator. Sometimes it’s even like your guidance counselor. Consider asking for a meeting to discuss continence.

These are some of the types of accommodations you can request: Attendance and scheduling accommodations, health and personal care, accommodations, dietary accommodations, continence plan, accommodations.

Here are some examples of accommodations within each of those categories. So for attendance and scheduling, you could ask to have attendance policies adjusted. You could ask for unrestricted access to the restroom. Another helpful tip is to ask for preferential seating in the classroom so that your child has an easy exit to get to the restroom.

Under health and personal care accommodations. You could ask for the school to provide assistance in the bathroom, including changing and cleaning unnecessary medication administration. That could happen by the school nurse, sometimes a lunchtime medication administration can lead to some benefit at the end of the school, at the end of the school day at home, providing a more private restroom with storage for supplies can be helpful for many children.

Dietary accommodations, unrestricted access to fluids. Having that in your toileting plan or any fluids recommended by the learner’s primary care. You could also ask about access to nutrition services.

Continence plan accommodations could include supporting the students privacy and dignity. So locating which restroom they’ll use and have access to their supplies is one way to do that. Making any plans for accidents, training staff and caregivers in understanding the student’s level of continence. Preparing ahead for field trips. Identifying the location of necessary supplies. Where will those be easily accessed

So toileting plans can be part of your child’s Individualized Education Plan and IEP, a 504 plan or an Individualized Health Plan and IHP and Toileting Plan. Options and implementation vary. Every school district approaches continence support differently. Your first step is to get the conversation started and advocate for what your child needs.

Thank you so much for taking the time to watch this video. The information contained in this video is for informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional health or medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care professional.