To alert LA/School/Social Services

The school usually have an emergency number for concerns about a child out of hours. Is that not on the answerphone or the website?

This is not true. Call the police. I worked in schools for years. The police will be able to contact the key holders for the school at the very least and it can be taken from there.

Please do. Years ago I saw a man verbally assaulting a little boy, I didn’t know who he was and it was in a city centre. That little boy’s traumatic response has stayed with me. If you know who the man is or who the little boy is, please report to Social Care.

Always better to report and be wrong than to not report.

Rather than posting on Mumsnet, you should have gone into school or contacted social services immediately. This child is now left all weekend. If you had done this at 15:40 when you posted, school could have confirmed his details to social care and they could have visited the child. Now, you need to contact the Police, who may or may not be able to locate this child but as school have finished, probably for half term, this may be impossible for another 10 days.

Doesn't your DS know his surname?

She doesn't really need to find out his name or try and find an email for the head. She could call the police right now and they would be able to take action very quickly.

I'm actually concerned the OP isn't doing that. Especially seeing as she has waited over 24 hours to do anything at all.

Thank you for reporting OP. I just wish some of the neighbours and passer byers had done that in the case of Sara Sharif.

If you don't know the boy's surname are you able to find out from someone else? If not, provide as much info as you can to social services. If they are already known to social services they will know who they are. Such a shame it's half term so school won't pick up the message. Is there an email for the head teacher at all?

Call police or MASH team. There will be an out of hours number. They will contact the school if needed.

Let the police worry about that

Go straight to the police. This child is in danger

Thank you for doing this.

then you call the non emergency police number and they will contact SS.

If it was so bad, why did you wait 24 hours to do anything about it?

You have a moral obligation to do something about this, you may be the only person that can help this innocent child. Do the right thing and go speak to school. I cannot even understand why you haven't in all honesty.

I agree. I always quite dismayed at poster who see potential abuse of a child and the first action they take is to post on MN rather than call SS or the police.

Emergency social work NOW they have to act. Police NOW

To be honest, I wouldn’t have ignored this yesterday no matter what I had on.

The message you left might not get picked up until after half term. When I’ve done Safeguarding training we’ve always been told that you need to think of what is the worst case scenario if you don’t report it? In this case, the child could be seriously harmed so you need to report it to MASH, social services, police. Do not leave it. Poor child.

I would always talk to the school in the first instance as the school would know the family and the circumstances. In this case it does sound as if social services need to be informed but in some cases there will be things the school would know about. For example you might see a tiny child walking to school on their own and think you need to report, but the school know that the child looks about 5 but is actually 8 and they have a parent who is housebound who is watching to make sure they get to school safely.

I agree with PPS who say Google out of hours team at the LA. In this area we have just finished for half-term so our school office won't be manned until we return to work. You could email school as the DSL should pick up emails this week. Even if the school has raised a concern, your observation from yesterday will be an important piece of the puzzle.

Phone the police and SS now rather than posting on here. They will be able to find out who he is.

Most schools have an emergency number on their websites that is a mobile that someone on the safeguarding team will be manning.

Yes, I would call or do an online referral to MASH/IFD/whatever your area calls it. If you google ‘children’s social care (name of your area/LA)’ it will come straight up.

As it is half term next week contact school and police as school might not pick up now and the police will make an automatic referral to CSC. Please make the call today.