How to handle this? Concerned about welfare of boy in dc class.

[SicillianMessengerBoy]

This little boy is friends with my child. I’ve had concerns for a while and over time I’ve noted more things that have made me feel sad and concerned for him. Examples:

• one of his eyes looks the wrong way. He was prescribed glasses about a year ago but never ever arrives at school wearing them.

• he never has a coat in winter. Also doesn’t bring a water bottle to school ever. Or even have a book bag.

• he is overweight. So overweight that he cannot run in the playground.

• his teeth are discoloured and a few of them look rotten.

His parents are not people I know. I see them but don’t know much about them. Not that that matters.

Our school is fucking useless with stuff like this so I’d not be surprised if they’ve not noticed or taken any steps, whatever they may be ( I’m clueless about this having had no experience). I don’t really trust them to handle it to be honest.

If I’m concerned about his wellbeing, as I am, what do I do here?

Every school has a safeguarding team so that would be my first stop. They have a duty of care to follow up on any concerns and after that I'd just keep an eye for a few weeks and if nothing seems to change then I'd contact social services and tell them you had spoken to school and nothing has changed.

Ask to speak to the school safeguarding lead.

While that’s pretty crap parenting, I wouldn’t say any of those things necessarily constitute an urgent concern unless there’s more. Most likely it will be logged and monitored by them.
I can’t immediately see SS doing a lot.

Contact NSPCC if you don't think school will do much.

Surely the school have noticed this as well? and it seems as if they have not raised the alarm, I’m not one to get involved in other people’s business but in this situation I would definitely be in touch with social services.

I'm sure the school have noticed, that's all very obvious and worrying points when put together. You would never be made aware of anything the school is doing so please don't think that it's not on their Radar. Safeguarding concerns are incredibly confidential and only people who need to be in the loop would be. But to set your mind at rest go talk to a teacher, they will have to fill in a safeguarding form and it might be just what the team need 🤷🏻‍♀️

@Eisley

Perhaps you’re right, I was just thinking if the school have noticed and they have raised their concern to whoever, surely there would be some changes.

The school may very well be raising issues regularly with school but they can't feed this back to parents and often this process is slow due to capacity at social services.

Ring it in directly to your local authority social services team- you just need the name and school of the child, an extra info or dob, address etc is a bonus

If you're not confident in the school and their safeguarding procedures, you can contact the local council's Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH)

Thanks for the advice everyone x

PS I really don’t trust the school’s safeguarding as I’ve been monitoring this situation for quite some time and nothing has changed. They seem to just send out blanket emails to the whole lot of parents saying ‘please ensure your child has a coat/ water bottle etc’ all the time which obviously are being ignored in this case at the very least. The poor boy was at school in the bitter cold with no coat ever. I’ll go over the school on this one I think.

It might not be a case of the school ignoring it - I'd be surprised if they were. Referrals to social services and other agencies take ages due to lack of resources and funding. They won't be able to tell you anything anyway and will only be able to take down your concerns. Again that's them not doing anything, it's them complying with the law as they cannot divulge any information about another child to you or anyone else. The school may be very proactive you don't know.
But it is very kind of you to want to help and I'd mention it to the school as well as other local agencies. The kite people making a big noise about it to agencies us the best way to get things done.

If you can afford it, could you discreetly drop off a water bottle, bookbag, jacket- whatever he might currently need?