Posted By Zoe Barnett Good afternoon - here are a couple of questions I'd appreciate some help with! The first is probably the most complicated. We have a young child about to start in one of our schools who is known to be a Hepatitis B carrier. He also has behavioural problems in that he bites people around him. Whilst we can offer the usual measures for staff (vaccinations, awareness, hygiene etc)we are concerned about how to manage the problem with regard to the other children. The main difficulty is maintaining the child's confidentiality whilst ensuring that any bites are immediately reported and dealt with. The school has also asked what their position would be should the virus be passed to another child whose parents were unaware of the presence of a Hep B carrier at the school. If anyone else has had to deal with a similar problem and has any suggestions I'd be very glad to hear from them. The second query is easier - a school wants to take a party of children to Holland next June. One of the youngsters is disabled and will need help in evacuating the hotel if there's a fire. Ideally the school would like to hire/borrow an evac-chair to take with them (they can't get a ground floor room and they'd booked the hotel before they knew this child would be going on the trip.) Do any colleagues know of anywhere in the South East that hires out the chairs - or even better has a chair they'd be willing to lend for a week? Many thanks, Zoe

Posted By Zoe Barnett Thanks Ashley, that's not patronising at all! I should have said that the info received will be going towards the overall risk assessment for the management of this child's condition, & that we will of course be seeking training re. the use of the evac chair if we can get our hands on one. Thanks again, Z

Posted By John Webster For your first problem, don't loose sight of the fact that if you cannot come up with a workable solution (and I'm sorry I cannot offer one which does not breach your confidentiality requirements), you may simply have to exclude the unfortunate child until such time as the biting problem is dealt with. The safety of the other children must come first, and they are first and foremost at risk from bite injury, the Hep-B being, in this context, a secondary consideration. On your second question, have you spoken with the hotel's fire or health & safety officer? Dutch legislation is generally progressive, and may be ahead of ours in implementing disability discrimination directives. Obviously you must satisfy yourselves that what they have in place meets your requirements, but responsibility for providing the safe means of evacuation for guests, disabled or otherwise, rests with them. If, on the other hand, they are prepared to accept a wheelchair bound guest but NOT provide appropriate means of evacuation, I would be taking a much closer look at their whole attitude towards health, safety and in particular, fire precautions.

Posted By peter gotch Whoops, forgot to add contact details Paraid Ltd Paraid House Weston Lane Birmingham B11 3RS T 0121 706 6744 F 0121 706 6746 email: info@paraid.co.uk www.paraid.co.uk p