All students require equitable access to school food programs.
Some students will have unique needs that require special consideration. A variety of things can impact a student’s ability to participate in school food programs, including mobility challenges, visual impairments, sensory differences, speech disorders, hearing limitations, intellectual disabilities, and more.
Considerations for Creating an Inclusive School Meal Program
- Is the physical environment safe and accessible for all students, including those with a larger body size, mobility challenges, wheelchair users, visual impairments, sensory differences, speech disorders and hearing limitations?
- Is support available for students who have eating and swallowing challenges and may require extra assistance with feeding?
- Is there adequate time for eating? Some students may need more than the allotted time to finish their food.
- Is your program communicated using plain language? Is it clear for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, or who speak English as a second language?
- Is there access to ingredient information for students and caregivers?
- Are mealtime staff trained to appropriately respond to the needs of students?
- Have students with diverse needs and their caregivers been included in the planning process?
- Have you consulted specialized itinerant staff (such as speech language pathologists), or disability or diverse ability- focused organizations to support program planning?
Food selectivity
Eating is a highly sensory experience. As students smell, see, hear, feel, and taste food, they experience sensory input from the food. Students may experience foods differently from one another. For some students, differences in how they process sensory information can lead to food selectivity.
Often mislabeled as “picky eating”, food selectivity can be related to the different ways people experience sensory input. Food selectivity can be experienced by anyone but tends to be more common in children who are neurodivergent.
Some common examples of food selectivity include:
- Avoiding foods with a certain texture, colour, or flavour
- Eating a limited number of familiar foods
- Eating only a specific brand of food
- Eating food that is only in a certain type of package or with a certain utensil
- Refusing to eat new foods
- Only eating foods at a certain temperature
- Leaving the table because of the smell
- Not being able to eat in the presence of distractions
- Having set routines that need to be followed around eating (foods must be cut a certain way, or eaten in a certain order)
- Refusing to eat foods that can be unpredictable in taste and texture such as fruits, where flavour and texture change according to ripeness and season
How can staff support students with food selectivity and diverse needs?
- Use a compassion-informed approach, and avoid using language that may make students feel pressure or shame.
- Follow the Division of Responsibility in Feeding.
- Include students and caregivers in the planning process to learn strategies they use at home around mealtimes and feeding.
- Consider adaptive equipment such as:
- Adaptable tables for wheelchair users
- Smaller tables for young children to support comfortable body position while eating
- Sound-cancelling earphones if lunchtime noise is distracting.
- Ensure food packaging is easy to open.
- Make the weekly meal program menu available to students and families.
- Have established mealtime routines that are communicated with students. If a child has a Student Learning Plan (SLP), Student Support Plan (SSP) or Individualized Education Plan (IEP), consider including goals and accommodations relating to mealtimes on their plan.
- Use tools such as PECS (picture exchange communication systems), board maker cards, or AACs (augmentative and alternative communication) to help remind students of routines and help them stay focused.
Additional resources to support students with disabilities and diverse abilities
- Supporting Neurodiversity in Schools (Autism Outreach.ca)
- Understanding Executive Function (Autism BC)
- Autism and Intellectual Disability: a free online portal to provide information and resource support to families and practitioners in British Columbia, Canada and beyond.
- BCEdAccess: an organization providing information and support for individual families, educators and organizations about the human right to equitable access to education.
- Supports and Services for People with Disabilities: BC government website listing programs and services available to people living with a disability in B.C.
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