Early years workers need to know what to do if a child has an epileptic seizure. Radhika Holmstroem shows how to cope
We told the other children in the nursery that Alex might not be well at times. He might fall on the floor and shake,' remembers nursery teacher Shelley Singh. 'Because of this, when we actually had emergencies the children dealt with them very calmly; in fact once a child came directly to an adult to tell us Alex wasn't very well. We made the situation safe and they just carried on around us.'
One in 130 people in the UK has some form of epilepsy (see box below); three-quarters of those people have their first seizure before the age of 20; and often it starts in early childhood. It stands to reason, then, that most people working in a nursery over a long period will probably deal with at least one child who has epilepsy.
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