to think a school should be able to look after a child for over an hour?

[pingu2209]

More of a "is my friend being unreasonable" or the school?

A mum friend of mine has a career job but can't afford a nanny. A nanny would cost all of her salary. She uses the before and after school club. She works 1 hour away and her husband works 1 1/2 hours away from school. She was phoned up and asked to come and collect her son as he had a temperature and a rash.

She said, "okay I will be there in about 1 1/4 hours." The school office said, "well we need you here asap, can you get someone to come in the next 10 mins?"

My friend said, "no, I don't have any family living near by and I am uncomfortable asking a friend to pick up my son who is ill and may be contagious."

The school said to her, "you need to have an emergency contact who can get here in under 10 mins."

She replied, "well that would be great in an ideal world, but we are not from here and have no family. A friend would pick up if I was running late, but as all my friends here have children, I can't ask them to pick up my son who is ill. I am just over an hour away but the longer I am on the phone to you the longer I will be. I need to make a couple of calls to cancel meetings etc. I can't just run out, I need about 15 mins just to close up my desk etc."

I understand that a school is there to educate our children, it is not childcare or a 'sick room'. However, surely they need to understand that if both parents are working and they don't have a nanny, one of them will be along as soon as possible.

Who is being unreasonable?

LS - I hope SS were pretty stiff with the school for wasting their time. "So, you're calling to tell us that Child X has parents and grandparents who work hard and sometimes are in meetings with their phones off. Good for them."

Before I comment let me say I think the school was wrong with its statement that your friend needs an emergency contact that could be there in ten minutes and that a school should take the best care they can when a child becomes ill ... but to play devils advocate... school budgets are very stretched; primary schools don't have nurses or sick rooms; children can't be left unsupervised; they can't sit outside the office if there is no one to watch them because the office staff work part-time and the office is closed. As a working mum I know how difficult it is to get to an ill child. But ... as a parent how would you feel if your child came home and said they hadn't changed their reading book, hadn't read to an adult and had done colouring sheets all afternoon as the teacher needed to sit in the doorway with the sickbucket, etc. ministering to an ill child? I'd be pretty peeved that my child had missed out on an afternoon's education.
The school handled it badly, but instead of heaping all the blame on the school, maybe some should be passed to those who leave a system that means schools are unable to care for children as they would wish.

I have read a few random pages and am truly shocked at the hard heartedness of some of the posts. OP imo your friend is NBU in expecting the school to care for her child for an hour or so until she can get there. As for the posts saying "it's not the school's function" to do this or that, I am dismayed. As HidinginaHardHat said, the school is in loco parentis and can call an ambulance if necessary and in an emergency should do so before calling the parent! As for the suggestion of calling Social Services Schools have a duty of care (as we all do) to children. I had the pleasure of seeing a former (now celebrity) school inspector, Gervase Phinn on stage recently, recounting his experiences of schools. Part of his wisdom was that children need to feel as cared for at school as they would in the best of homes. To my mind that means having a sick room/quite area where the child can lie down whilst waiting to be collected. Basic stuff. I repeat YANBU.

'at the dad's attitude (I'm a very busy man, can't you deal with it?)'

I would be too but that is slightly different from I am physically and hour away I am on my way isn't it?

Actually make that a lot different.

I meant I would be annoyed too, I thought I had copied and pasted more of that.

To all those people saying the school WBU, what do you expect them to do, if staffing is so stretched that there is no-one to watch the child. Would you be happy for them to sit quietly, possibly alone, and wait?

Gosh, when I felt unwell at school, I sat in a tiny room off the secretary's office until the end of the day (unless I was actually puking).

Schools should have sick rooms imo.

Ah, Hula, had forgotten that very important detail! But my friends who had been through the junior school at SHS lived in places such as Hathersage, which, from memory, would be at least an hour's journey from school.

Even if we had a sick room we are not allowed to leave children in it unsupervised by a member of staff!

Clam, sorry, but the school has a legal duty of care and is in loco parentis (although the phrase may have been updated). It's up to the school to make arrangements to cater for children who are taken ill. They know it will happen and need to make sure all children are safe at all times.

Hathersage is about half an hour, maybe 40 minutes awaty from town, less to Broomhill where the schools are. Probably longer at rush hour.

DD's teacher from last year lives in Hathersage :)

I'd love to know which part of the budget we could cut to get a sick room and a member of staff on standby to supervise it?

I don't know any school who wouldn't look after children for as long as possible.

For example, I know one of DD's class mates was stuck at school for a long time. It was when we had flooding and the parents side of town was flooded and they simply couldn't get across town at all, by any route. They didn't arrive at school til after 7pm/ they did keep in touch ith school re their progress. It was forunately a parent's evening night anyway so staff were around til late. But she was looked after. A teacher got her some food and drink, they kept her safe and warm and occupied, and were there until her parents could arrive.

Teachers and schools will do what the need to ime. But sometimes they do try and emphasise the need for parents to arrive asap - and I do think the OP''s school is OTT re 10 mins - with sick children. One of the reasons for this is some parents really do take advantage - it does happen!

School is BU imo.
Although I am only 2 miles from DD's school or DD2's nursery it can still take me up to an hour to get to them, never midn the fact that I do not have my phone on me all hours of the day, and DH is just as close but can be doing work in a place with no mobile phone or landline reception, so they just haev to wait, and have done. It can't be helped.

Clam, sorry, but the school has a legal duty of care and is in loco parentis (although the phrase may have been updated). It's up to the school to make arrangements to cater for children who are taken ill.

They do - they call the parents when a child is poorly. When my 5 year old ds is ill, it's me or his dad that he needs, not a bucket and a strange room.

I really don't buy all this rubbish about the requirement (some mad people even call it the law) for an adult to be supervised by another adult, looking out for a child under these circumstances. Common sense over rules everything. It it hysteria. Beauracracy that no one even understands. In the same way as it it not against the law to take photos of the nativity play. It's guidelines

Feenie - what if you or his Dad are more than a couple of hours away? That's what this thread is about.

Yes Feenie, problem is some people seem to think parents can magic themselves to school in less than the time it takes them to get to work and/or that schools are unable to look after sick children until the parent can get there.

Maybe the "Can't be left unsupervised" thing needs to go then

Hula, you can tell how long it is since I lived there, then! I lived 15 miles away but my mother worked in Manchester so no chance of swooping on a sick child in half an hour.

Mind you, I do occasionally still grumble about the time the bus broke down on the way home and it was snowing and I called my mother to come and pick me up but she told me 'by the time I get there the next bus will be due'. I threw a teenage strop and made her come out anyway. Next bus arrived just as she pulled up...

Well, I couldn't get through all 20 pages but I did my best! I live in the London suburbs, and it's pretty normal around here to work at least an hours commute away from your home, and to not have any family living locally. At the moment it would take DH over an hour to get to DS's nursery, it would take me anything from 40 mins to well over an hour depending on where I am when I get the call (am a community HCP), and it would take granny over an hour. I wouldn't expect a friend, if any of them were available anyway, to pick up a contagious child, and logistocally I'm not sure how they'd do it anyway as none of us have double buggys or happen to have a spare car seat. Plus they'd all be 30 mins away too.
These days it's just not practical for a school to expect there to be someone 10 minutes down the road to collect a poorly child. I don't want an ill child of mine stuck in an office with a secretary, but unfortunately I'd have little chice.

Occasions when I have been called by the school and told to collect my DSs :

1. When DS1/DS2 was sick and had a temperature (I think about twice each over the years);
2. When DS1 'felt unwell' 35 mins before the end of the school day;
3. When DS2 had a cough (no pain, temperature, sickness, nor did he feel ill) because it was loud enough to disturb the class
4. When DS2 split his trousers on the climbing frame one lunchtime;
5. When DS1 had a nosebleed, most of which went on his shirt which was then covered in blood.

Instance 1, no question. I don't know any parent who wouldn't collect in those circumstances (or get a CM/family member to do so if they couldn't) - albeit many might take an hour, or even more, to get there.

Instances 2-5, I was very tempted to suggest some common sense was used. I didn't collect, and DSs were collected at the end of the school day as usual. I'm sure someone will say that was wrong of me though!

StealthPolarBear "Maybe the "Can't be left unsupervised" thing needs to go then". Not a chance. Imagine if we left a sick child in a room unsupervised and they fell, choked, had a fit, became unconcious? The thought is horrifying and no teacher or parent would want that risk.

Yes, I agree KittySpencer, there is common sense and then there are schools that are scared to take the risk with other people's children. School staff are not trained to make those decisions and are just as often moaned at for making the decision not to call a parent when a child has a headache, tummy ache, etc. I sometimes feel we just can't win!

OK, so I'm going to stick my neck out here and suggest that the one who's being unreasonable here is the emergency contact "friend" who refused to collect the ill child. It was hardly going to be for long - just until the parent could get there. Surely it'd be better for the child to be snuggled up with a familiar adult in a family home than sitting on a hard chair in a corridor in school.