Have the school failed here?

[cabletied]

Hi,

My sister is struggling at the moment with some mental health issues that we have just become aware of. I am trying to support her. She has a 13 year old daughter who is often not attending school.

Last week, her daughter stayed at home on Weds, Thurs and Fri. My sister buried her head in the sand and didn't call the school. The school sent a text each morning and called later on, on each day. My sister didn't engage with this.

Am I right in thinking that the school should really have sent someone round to the house after a couple of days? I know that my sister is responsible too, but anything could have happened to my niece.

Is this not a massive safeguarding failure on the school''s part?

When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, there were truant officers who did just that.

Very much doubt there’s funding for that now.

My daughter’s attendance has dropped to 60% (her MH issues, not mine). I don’t call and they might ring me twice a week. Never seen a soul.

As far as I’m aware schools need eyes on but the frequency of that is at their choosing.

This sounds like a terrible environment for a young girl. Could your niece stay with you for a while?

Do you think schools have spare staff to go round houses? They have called, they are doing their duty.

The school may not have resources to send people around? Wouldn't they report to SS?

No.

Schools will send people round but they prioritise.

The texts and calls are the standard.

Schools have fewer and fewer people in these days.

Proactivity and trigger for visits will vary by LA and school. Is dn struggling with mh or concerned about leaving dsis?

If this is regular behaviour it won't raise too many red flags.
They would be concerned if it goes on for longer or if there's evidence/accusations of abuse.
It's absolutely not that they don't care but there aren't staff available to pop round. The threshold for a referral to SS or police is really high too so this wouldn't flag up support either.
Has the daughter been in contact with friends? Staff may have spoken to them and they've been able to say she's ok/they've had contact.

No. If by the end of next week they still haven’t seen her or had contact I might expect them to consider further investigations but the burden on schools for safeguarding now is just enormous and they simply don’t have the capacity to send people round to all the houses of children they don’t see for a couple of days.

What are you doing to support your niece?

It's only been three days. There are thousands of kids bunking off school for way longer than that. Can't expect the school to visit them all??

This used to be the job of the Education Welfare Officer. Do they still exist?

The average pupil attendance last year was 93% This means that across an academic year (39 weeks, 195 days), the average student will miss 14 days.

In a secondary school of 1000 students that's 14,000 days missed. Still think they're unreasonable not to pop round each time?!

Teachers are there to teach.
Parents need to stop seeing Schools as having 24/7 responsibility.

They've got enough going on.

DDs schools does this, they have an attendance person ring everyone that's off from lunchtime to touch base / see if there is anything that can be put in place and if your attendance is below X they do a house visit.

Ofcourse if the Attendance officer is off themselves on a course or ill this doesn't happen.

Instead of blaming school contact them yourself or offer to take your DNeice

Welfare and Attendance teams in schools tend to work in different ways .

One school I know would be phoning one day 1 if parent/carer not been in contact.
Another go into action when attendance hits 90%.

You could contact the safeguarding lead and raise your worries.

It will flag at some point. However, I am intrigued that as a relative, who is fully aware of the situation, you are abdicating that responsibility to the school.

What have you done OP to engage your niece in returning to school? Have you spoken to the school and let them know what's happening?

The primary purpose of registration and a follow-up call/text is to make sure the child hasn't gone missing on the way to school.

So long as the school has had some form of contact each day, and they are confident the child is home and safe, then three days is unfortunately not an alarming length of time. If this persists into next week or if a pattern emerges of persistent absence, then absolutely the attendance officer should be picking it up.

Sadly there just isn't the budget for this type of thing any more.

No, they haven't failed. They've noticed an absence problem and flagged it with the person actually responsible for ensuring that 13 yr old attends school. 3 days in a row on one occasion isn't exactly persistent and could have a good reason, so it's not urgent yet, just something to keep an eye on. Their remit doesn't stretch to parents' mental health issues.

Not after a couple of days, no. After a couple of weeks, educational welfare from the council are likely to.visit.

All schools should be making contact on the first day if they haven't already heard from the parent/guardian. There was an awful case many years ago now where a child was abducted on the way to school and no one raised the alarm until they failed to come home from school that afternoon. Most schools this is just a quick phone call in the first/second/probably third instance.

I think that if your sister is so unwell that you are concerned about your niece then you need to contact the school and tell them she is especially vulnerable. You and your sister should give your contact details so that if your sister doesn't answer and your niece is absent they should call you. The school do not have the staff to come round to every parent who doesn't answer.

I haven't done this role for 2 years, but if no-one reported a child absent and the parent wasnt responding to our call, we had to call the emergency contacts supplied and ask if they had seen the child and coukd check on them and let us know.

This was after the case where a mum died and her young child then died a few days later. It became government advice to be persistent.

There’s been a few cases of dc being at risk that could have been saved if school had acted so there is a responsibility on the school to check on the dc, even on day one if parents isn’t available. In reality those thresholds may vary with schools using knowledge of family situations and common sense but that’s a risky strategy. I hear people saying schools are short staffed but not prioritising safeguarding is unusual.

We have a full time attendance officer (amongst her many other hats). She starts calling and emailing at 0900 every day and generally doesn't finish until first break at around 1030 - at that point there will still be parents she hasn't been able to contact, and she will have contacted anyone named on the child's records.

She is not allowed to go alone to parents houses, there has to be a second person with her - there isn't always a second person available; teachers and TAs are teaching, non-teaching staff may be in meetings etc.

Childrens Services say that non-attendance alone is not a good enough reason for reporting/action. The police won't come out unless we have an extremely good reason to believe that parent/child is in danger.

OP, if you believe that your relative may have been in danger, then you should have done something about it.