You will have students who have dietary needs whether through food intolerance, allergies or illness; and students with medical conditions or allergies. Clearly the variety of questions arising is impossible to deal with in detail, but we have general advice regarding how we can make your students’ experiences as enjoyable as possible whilst ensuring that they can still take any medication or eat any food easily. Identification Whether a dietary or a medical matter, it is vital that students obtain the appropriate care. We have found that the single simplest step to ensure this is just knowing who the student is. Teachers attending camp may not be, especially in a large school, the same teachers who encounter a particular student so may not know that they are diabetic, for example. We ask that you appoint a teacher at every mealtime and tuck shop opening to supervise, armed with all relevant information. This is the best way to ensure that students get the food they’re supposed to have – students can get excited and forgetful, or be too embarrassed to single themselves out, and be served the wrong food. – Make sure all staff have medical lists of all students with issues identified – Make sure serious medical issues are pointed out to staff prior to the trip – Appoint a teacher to supervise at meal serving times – Remember that our staff don’t know your students’ names! – Don’t forget the teachers! They can have dietary needs too, and are often the ones forgotten until the last minute. Preparation and planning For dietary issues, we ask that you send a form to us before the trip. If any issues are extremely serious, we may need to discuss these with you, so the earlier the better. It is easier to make arrangements well in advance where special facilities are required. ‘Normal’ issues are common to many schools now – these would include coeliacs, diabetics, regular intolerances, non-critical allergies. At this level – i.e. serious and needing dietary consideration but not outside of the norm for people who cater for schools every week, we just need to know about a week in advance. Send all info to: info@trekco.com Refrigeration – we do have separate fridges for people who need to keep separately provided food or medication away from other products, accessible to teachers. Research – normally parents will be the main source of information regarding what a student can eat. However, further research can be very useful. We recommend these sites: anaphylaxis.org.uk – anything to do with allergies, whether food or other allergies. coeliac.org.uk – gluten free advice; they have a great helpline and database of which foods have gluten in, and what you can get that’s gluten-free.
