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Toilet Letters for Schools

 

Lakeside Medical Practice receives a number of requests from patients and parents asking us to provide a letter to a school requesting a toilet pass or permission for a pupil to have unrestricted access to toilet facilities.

We understand that patients may be asked by their school to obtain such a letter from their GP. However, Lakeside Medical Practice does not routinely provide letters or certificates requesting toilet passes for pupils.

Where a child or young person has a medical condition that affects their need to access toilet facilities, we recommend that the school is made aware of their individual needs and that appropriate arrangements are discussed directly with the school.

We have provided a template letter that can be shared with the school. This explains the position of Lakeside Medical Practice and highlights the importance of ensuring that pupils with genuine medical or health-related needs are able to access toilet facilities appropriately, without unnecessary distress or embarrassment.

If the pupil is under the care of a hospital consultant or specialist service, the consultant or specialist team may be able to provide more detailed medical evidence or supporting documentation regarding their condition and specific needs.

We appreciate your understanding that GP practices are not always able to provide documentation for matters that can be appropriately addressed between the school, pupil and their family.

Template letter

You can copy and paste this to your prefered document/letter platform

Dear Head Teacher,

We have been contacted with the request that a Doctor’s note should be provided in order to allow the provision of a “toilet pass” to pupils whilst at school.

Access to safe, timely and appropriate personal hygiene is considered to be essential to human dignity. This is particularly important to people who have periods, which often vary in timing and heaviness, especially in the years surrounding menarche.

While discipline issues are important and a small percentage of pupils abuse their right to access personal hygiene, this is not a medical issue. It is also not an NHS matter to provide evidence of a child’s lack of continence, urinary or faecal urgency or menstrual difficulties. It is not dignified for a pupil to be singled out as having toileting difficulties and there are significant potential medical ramifications in either deliberately dehydrating to prevent the need for a toilet or in withholding either stool or urine and both can worsen continence issues. It is also significantly harmful to a young person’s mental wellbeing to risk an episode of incontinence within the classroom or to prevent them accessing menstrual hygiene, leading to soiling.

In addition, especially in these uniquely challenging times, where both workload and finance are significantly strained in all public sectors, it is not possible for us to take on additional non-funded work. We are also not prepared to charge the children or their families for paperwork to allow them basic dignity.

As such, The Village Practice will not be providing separate notes to specific pupils to allow them to use the toilet. Whether an individual child can delay their needs until the end of a lesson is a matter for the school, the child and their family.

If you feel it necessary, please accept this letter as confirmation that we consider that all children have a need to access a toilet when they need to use it for urinary, defecation or menstrual reasons.

Yours sincerely,

Lakeside Medical Practice