Does everyone have people close to school to collect in emergency?

[99problemsandthecatis1]

Not a TAT but based on a comment someone made.

One poster suggested that people who work far from their child's school would surely have someone local as an emergency contact. Is this true?

DS starts school in September, both DH and I work full time and even if I were to leave my desk immediately it would take 30 minutes to get to school, but more realistically 45 to an hour as I'd have to talk to my boss, cancel meetings etc. DH is at the mercy of trains so could be there in 15 or it could be an hour or more depending on the time. He then couldn't get the DC home again due to lack of transport. We don't live near family and all our friends work full time as well.

What do people do? The kids are in childcare currently and on the 2 occasions I've had to collect they've just had to wait which nursery seem fine with but are schools different? This has actually got me slightly worried.

I worked in a role where I couldn’t just drop everything and pick up my child. No relatives within 250 miles. We did have an au pair who could assist but it wasn’t always easy for them either ( college courses). My DH had a job where he could more easily drop work to get to school but would still take up to an hour.
Don’t forget that a nursery/ school emergency is usually nothing of the sort and they can sit quite happily for an hour or so while you do your best to get there.
My supervisor has been known to pick up my child when there were no other alternatives. Not a usual situation I know.

I never put a third contact down for dd.
There is me- who can be at school in 10 mins from calling (I live and work within half a mile of the school)
My mum - who can be there slightly faster because she drives (she also lives and works close to the school)
I never put dp down because dp is half an hour away minimum, not taking into account time to finish the job they are doing.

When dd goes to secondary school, she will be half an hour away from me and an hour away from dp. I will be able to drive by then 🤞🤞 so I can go and get her, but she will have to wait.

I am the only emergency contact for my DCs who is anywhere near local and suitable to collect them, there is nobody else who would be either prepared or able to do it. Schools just have to accept that not everybody has somebody to step in to help.

Unfortunately I'm not always contactable. I work in hospitals, prisons and sometimes court. In court my phone is off, in prison it is surrendered at reception and locked away, in hospital it is on silent. When I'm in prison, my work know which prison I am in and could get a message to me but obviously that would add to the time, same with court. In hospital I'm less easy to locate but more likely to look at my phone.

DH is usually contactable but if he's out of the office on a site visit his phone is usually in the site office. There's no office number or other way of getting hold of him (which proved a nightmare when I had to tell him his grandfather had had a stroke and then later passed away). My mum works in a psychiatric unit, albeit part time and ad-hoc but when in work isn't contactable.

It would be extremely rare that none of the 3 of us were uncontactable at the same time though.

I'll not worry about it then. Thanks for the reassurances.

I forgot a neighbour put me as an emergency contact. I then got a job in the school office. I didn't expect to have to ring myself 😂

No l was always an hour away from school. Had no local friends or family who could pick up kids. School just had to keep then until l could get there

My 3rd contact is my mum for "in dire emergency only - she can keep trying to get hold of me" - as she's 4 hours away.

DH can normally drop everything and be there in under 30 minutes so he's main contact, but he's a bugger for not having his phone off silent so I did put a note on there that if he wasn't answering, get one teacher's husband who works with him to walk across the office and yell at him.

I'm either incredibly near or I'm a good hour away if trains are obliging so these days DH is the number 1 contact but the school still always flipping ring me about anything and everything anyway!

If we got stuck these days I've got a few fellow parents locally I could message around to see who was at home that day and could grab the kids if needed and vice versa - I'd say it's probably taken till this year to get to the point confidently where I know I could call on multiple people - the networks take time to establish.

We do now, but didn't used to. I always assumed they'd ring the parent and keep them in the office etc until the parent could arrive.

My job means I’m difficult to contact too - depending on when they called I might not see my phone for a couple of hours. My husband is more easily contactable but can’t leave work easily. I usually tell the school how long I’ll be and they pretty much need to live with the knowledge I’m doing my best to be there as quickly as possible.

They sometimes just have to wait. When mine were at nursery, I had lots of local friends, but lots had small babies or were pregnant and I could never have asked them to collect a poorly child.

We did have one occasion where I'd offered to cover in surgery and DH was away in the US, I must have just gone in when they called to say that DS had chicken pox spots, so they called my third contact who was my mum - 3 hours away. She did arrive a little before me, but not much.

I can get to school in under an hour and they usually have to wait a bit for me to get there if DD is sick. If they absolutely had to have someone there sooner I could ask her CM but in the 6 years she’s been at school they’ve always been happy to wait.

The emergency contact is also for the scenario of your child doesnt come into school - we cant get hold of anyone for a day or two - we call the contact. It was brought in after a mother died and her child was with her body for two weeks before dying himself. We are supposed to call the emergency contact to check up on your welfare. It was suggested as necessary in the safeguarding updates.

How on earth did that happen? If a child doesn't turn up at school for that length of time would you not be asking the police for a welfare check after a couple of days?

It was a famous case on the news and govt advice as a resukt of that was to ask all schools for a third contact. It wasnt at my school btw! We would call the police if we heard nothing for a few days but they expect you to have called an emergency contact. The refugee families tend to have a sicial worker, church person or LEA person as their emergency contact.

You have to just get there when you can. End of. If there aren't any other possibilities then there's nothing you can do.

I'm a SAHM, DH works continental shifts so is often home too during school days and the school is just a street and a half away from home also the same distance from one set of grandparents, we are just fine for emergency help. My mum is just 6 miles away too and can drive so there's another option. Because of this I've made it clear that should any school mum friends need me to get their kids I'm more than happy to. Its the same with a lot of other parents there as well because many of us know each other with it being a village school.

If I can't get my kids one day I just message my group of school mum friends and ask and they all jump in with offers of help.

As long as you make damn sure it's absolute emergency only and you stay away from CFer territory, schoolmum (or dads) friends are invaluable. If you can, try and form a good relationship with some and make sure to reciprocate and it'll take some pressure off if the school gets closed for snow/boiler breakdown/flooding/alien invasion... or whatever.

We don't! We would both take between 30-50 minutes to get home. We know no-one locally.

At my child's state primary school they actually said that if you couldnt name a local pick up contact (15 mins max) in the event of adverse bad weather then your child couldnt use the after school club.

I could understand the issue - ie that staff needed to be able to get home safely. But I didnt have family local and my school friends would all of had their own small children to deal with. And would not have been able to come out to collect. We left the school before the next lot of bad weather so I dont know how the new policy went down.

Me, that's one of the reasons i didn't go back to work as we have no one else