The risk management of childhood diabetes by primary school teachers

Abstract

This article explores the attitudes of primary school staff in relation to managing children with diabetes. It reports the findings of a qualitatively orientated study in which we conducted in-depth, semi-structured face-to-face interviews with 22 staff that held a variety of positions in primary schools and had a range of experience of caring for children with diabetes. We consider the anxieties and apprehensions expressed to us by our interviewees (covering topics such as injecting/blood testing, and the reactions of parents to school decisions), in both their capacities as educators and, increasingly, frontline care-givers to other people's children. The expansion and formalisation of healthcare responsibilities within the primary school is shown to have impacted upon the risk assessments made of children with diabetes. Analysis of the data therefore focuses on health related risk anxieties as they are played out in adult/child relations and in the specific context of the primary school.