INTRODUCTION:

With Gluten Free Diet being the only treatment currently available, schools, the place where children spend most of their day, must ensure a diet that meets these needs.

OBJECTIVES:

To assess i) parent's perceptions of children with celiac disease regarding the ability of schools to provide gluten- free meals, ii) school professional’s knowledge of celiac disease and care in a Gluten Free Diet, iii) and the impact of training on it.

METHODOLOGY:

Cross-sectional study, whose sample consisted of parents of celiac children, aged 2 to 9 years, members of the Associação Portuguesa de Celíacos and residents of Greater Porto and the school professionals that these children attended. A questionnaire was applied to the first ones to understand their confidence on the safety of meals in schools and, subsequently, a questionnaire about celiac disease and Gluten Free Diet was applied to professionals from schools who received or not training about this issue. To test hypotheses about the independence of qualitative variables, the Chi-square independence test or Fisher's exact test were applied. In all hypothesis tests a significance level of α = 5% was considered.

RESULTS:

It was found that only half of parents trusted that schools were able to comply with a Gluten Free Diet for their children (56.3%). More than half of school professionals had never received training on celiac disease, having been observed statistically significant differences between untrained and trained professionals in terms of knowledge about celiac disease.

CONCLUSIONS:

A considerable proportion of parents of celiac children don’t trust on the safety of meals served in their children's schools. Further training in the food and catering service is needed. It was also concluded that training provided was not sufficient for effective improvement of knowledge.

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