@Russell19
"The most important thing is that school always have a way to keep you informed and contact you. A child once lost consciousness in my class and nobody on the contacts was even picking up the phone. The poor child had to go in and ambulance and be in hospital with no family, just a member of staff. The parent turned up at normal home time and hadn't looked at their phone all day and were then told where their child was...."
I have to respectfully disagree on this point. It is very unfortunate for this child, and the fact that the parents couldn't be contacted. However it is wholly unreasonable to expect people to be constantly checking their phone for these kind of events that are not overly likely.
I'm sure the parent felt awful for their child, and terribly embarrassed, but we are allowed to attend occasions where phones aren't allowed, or our phone battery runs out, or we even forget the phone (or it is broken). In those scenarios, you would assume your other contacts could be reached (although you have no way of checking).
This stuff happens. Parents or contacts may be unreachable.
I was a single parent for years. So no other contacts. I have no support network to speak of. Friends came and went, mostly proved unable to cope with my asd/adhd child. So I was more vigilant with my phone checking (which made me paranoid all the time, feeling like I had this constant online presence every time I turned the screen on to check - why wasn't I responding to messages?!). But there were still days where my battery died, or I forgot my phone etc.
Now I have a boyfriend, so he is added on to the contact list. However as a teacher himself, he is an hour away, and not able to drop everything instantly, so it would be maybe 90 mins until he reached school.
I do work locally, but as a midwife, sometimes it will take me an hour to organise relief, or to pass work over. In a true emergency, I know my colleagues would rally around, but as I deal in life and death scenarios, it would have to be a serious scenario for this to happen.
It did actually happen once, but my child was at home, with a nanny I employed at the time. She was putting him to bed, when he held his breath and stopped breathing. He went blue and she called 999. He came round quickly, but obviously I needed to get home to him as an ambulance was on it's way. My colleagues did indeed take over my labouring woman. I did however have to return to work when I knew he was well a few hours later to complete paperwork as these are legal documents that shouldn't be done that far in retrospect.
Parents have to work. There really isn't anything else to it. It is good if you have support. But many do not, so have to make do with mostly a wish and a prayer 🤷.