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?

I think other parents would be sympathetic to a situation where a teacher had to cover another for an hour once in a while

Do you mean so that a teacher can look after a sick child? As someone has already pointed out, in a school of 400 children, you may have as many as three poorly children per day. That's not once in a while.

Peachy - I don't have a back-up plan either. As I said earlier in the thread, I don't know anyone locally well enough to ask them to be an emergency contact (thanks to depression, I've found it a struggle to get out there and meet people). Dh is sometimes in London or Germany, and is often in meetings with his phone switched off.

I asked this question, and have had no answer:

Am I allowed to go out of the house at all? Can I go to the gym, or swimming, or to a doctor's appointment (where I would have to turn my phone off)? What about going out shopping?

From what some people have said on this thread, it seems pretty clear to me that I shouldn't try to have a life at all, just in case one of the dses needs picking up from school. They've been very forceful about the fact that the child's well being must be the parent's first priority, and nothing should get in the way of collecting a sick child - my question is aimed at them.

I live 2 blocks from school and couldn't get there in 10 minutes without warning (unless my kid was choking or an emergency, in which case I would likely leave the house without locking up or dressing properly)... it takes that long to dress the toddler and find shoes etc... but I do think if both parents work so far from school, they need to ask a parent friend to be the emergency contact. What if their child had an accident? I also think 15 minutes to cancel meetings and close desk is unreasonable when your child is sick. Surely someone else in the office could ring round for her, and you can always just set the computer to hibernate...

What do you mean? Choose and pay a person you dont know on spec? That sounds a bit much.

since most schools aren't allowed to administer fever reducing meds or pain killer, over an hour is a bit mean on the sick child... I had bronchitis when I was 11 and had to wait 45 minutes in the sick bay for my SD to get me; I was shivering and feeling dreadful, an illness can come on very suddenly and that is why an emergency contact is important. Of course parents can still go swimming etc, but in most other situations being contactable is pretty easy and could save the kid a long wait...

You can't win in today's society. I was told I was a lazy and irresponsible parent for not applying for a job on the basis it was 98 miles each way. Yet I would be irresponsible to have a job that kept me more than 10minutes away from the school. Can't have it both ways can we?

Am I allowed to go out of the house at all? Can I go to the gym, or swimming, or to a doctor's appointment (where I would have to turn my phone off)? What about going out shopping?

Of course you are. Just take a mobile with you - that's common sense, surely? Every single person on this thread has said that 10 minutes is unreasonable, so no idea who you are aiming this at.

I work in a hospital half of my time. Cant use my mobile and may be mid stream with a patient. I think parents can only try their best.

With the best will in the world close emergency contacts wont always be available or possible.

There is also a certain inevitability about the fact that sod's law dictates that a child will fall ill on the day that both parents are out of town, mobiles mysteriously lose charge/signal and Transgas and the water board conspire to isolate the school completely.

I would not feel comfortable if neither dp nor I could get to our dd within half an hour if she needed us. However, needs must and everyone has to make up their own minds and there isn't necessarily always much of a choice.

I expect that in reality the school would call an ambulance in a true emergency, and if not that they would hold onto the child until a parent came however long that might be. If in rare cases a parent was simply "not bothered" not collect a sick child then presumably the school would involve social services. Schools really need to be geared up to the expectation that many children do not have a SAHP.

I'd love to have been able to get to my DS in 10 minutes when we lived in London. Unfortunately it simply wasn't possible to get there in under 40 minutes, more often at least an hour. That's the reality in London - actually many of my colleagues lived a lot further out.

Schools cannot and should not assume parents are sitting around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the phone to ring. They simply need to have better protocols in place. And if my DS sits in the office and hears stuff not meant for his ears, then that's a shame but that is the school's issue, not the parents'.

I think most schools will look after a sick child as best they can until a parent manages to get there, and assume that that parent will get a shift on and hurry as fast as possible.
BUT, there seems to be a growing sense of "entitlement" that it is a school's job to provide nursing care and that a parent can't be expected to drop everything and come in a reasonable time-frame, because they have important busy lives to lead.
We had a child recently who became very unwell during the course of the morning (although it transpired of course that she'd been unwell throughout the night as well, and been sick that morning but had been packed off to school regardless) and it was clear she needed to go home. It wasn't what you'd call a 'blue-light' ambulance scenario, but school was not the place for her at that time; she needed her mum/dad and her bed. We had a very snippy parent on the phone who demanded why on earth she couldn't go to the sick bay and be watched by a member of staff if she wasn't well, as she was busy at work and it was awkward to leave. It was pointed out that we don't have a sick bay. The mother then asked what we planned on doing with the child then and it was said that she'd have to wait in the foyer for collection. "But she's ill." said the mother. "Yes," said the secretary, "that's why she needs to go home. Soon."

BUT, there seems to be a growing sense of "entitlement" that it is a school's job to provide nursing care and that a parent can't be expected to drop everything and come in a reasonable time-frame, because they have important busy lives to lead.

Yes, clam - on this thread. They're certainly the kind of posts that have made me react.

maryz - I have total sympathy! Each time that one of mine has had to go to hospital I have been abroad and had the heartstopping phone call which goes something along the lines 'dont panic but....'. I didnt travel abroad very often and my children have only ended up in hospital a very few times but they always manged to nail it!

But it's not a simple case of parents being deliberately difficult is it?

In some jobs it is very very difficult to just get up and leave, sometimes for practical reasons (if you work in a healthcare role, and are part way through examining or treating a patient). Also not all employers are understanding (when in more junior posts, I've had difficulty in being allowed to leave at short notice, or had to wait for a manager to be free to ask permission etc - yes I'm sure some people would say 'oh I'd just get up & walk out etc' but if you rely on your salary to live, then you can't afford to get into a disciplinary situation with employers) and make it very awkward for parents. Frankly the school then wading in and having a go is the last thing parents need.

As for sense of entitlement - would that be feeling entitled not to be judged or spoken to like scum because you can't get to a school in under an hour?! Because I don't think any parent deserves that, and school staff who behave in such a manner, or think that parents in that situation are 'wrong' would do well to get down off their high horses and try living in the real world.

Feenie - the question I was really trying to ask was, given that I have no emergency contacts other than dh, and he is often incommunicado, how do I cope with having a social life that may be either too far from the school for a reasonable pick-up time or might require me to switch my phone off, or be out of earshot of it?

Though it would be even worse if I were working too - at least I am at home most of the time, and don't actually have that much of a social life, so the chances are that I would be available if needed - though sod's law dictates that the one time that a boy would need an emergency pickup would be the only day for months when dh and I were both incommunicado!

But working parents often aren't at the school gates, where you're most likely to make the sort of friends you can ask to be an emergency contact, and if both parents are working, both may be too far from the school or incommunicado. I don't know how someone in that position is meant to cope - like the OP's friend, who was criticised by the school, though she did her best to get to her child as soon as possible.

It is a case of parents being difficult sometimes, e.g. vomiting children are hardly an emergency.

"spoken to like scum?" Where did that happen?

Schools cannot and should not assume parents are sitting around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the phone to ring. Yes I agree, but ...
They simply need to have better protocols in place. What do you suggest? Cut a teaching assistant post so that we can employ a "nurse" on standby? Or maybe remove a teaching assistant from a physically disabled child if another child is sick (an woe betide us if that child has an accident in the meantime, or there is a fire and the class teacher struggles to get all the class plus an immobile child out of their seat, into their chair and out of school)? Plus what about schools, like ours, that are so small the office is no bigger than a cupboard? Maybe the ill child could share the secretary's chair (if it's a morning because the office is empty in the afternoons - ahh! but then she wouldn't be there to supervise the child.) Oh, but what if it's three ill children at once? Maybe we could cut a teacher for a year to pay to build a medical room? Yes, I know I'm getting flippant, but we're not being awkward when we say current funding makes caring for ill children difficult.
Finally, And if my DS sits in the office and hears stuff not meant for his ears, then that's a shame but that is the school's issue, not the parents'. has a tone of "tough, not my problem, it's the school's problem", like so many things at the moment. It feels like another example of school's being expected to take more and more responsibility without anyone providing the money for us to do it properly. Maybe we should bath them and change them into their pyjamas before we send them home so working parents don't have to do that.

Well said kitty there is a big difference between not being bothered to go and pick them up and going but being incapable of getting there any faster.

To all those who have said what are the chances of them taking ill when you are not available. Well my dd has 7 emergency contacts. I work part of time and 'out of hours' One day I had to go to an in hours training course. XH was in England. Contacts 3 and 4 were at a funeral a 45min drive away and had their phones off in church (for the service only), contact 5 was at the supermarket which is 20miles away (no car relying on public transport), contact 6's phone was broken and contact 7 was in a meeting. DD managed to take ill at the precise moment these all coincided.

I had just stepped off the train on the way to the course. I answered my phone and turned right round but I had to wait 15minutes for a train, take a 35min train journey and then walk (half run) the 2 miles to the school. Do people honestly think that makes me an uncaring irresponsible mother. If she had taken ill 40min earlier then I would have turned around before getting on the train and would have ony had the 2 mile run. If she had taken ill 1hr later contacts 2 and 4 would have been out of church, phones back on and on the road back home. Do you honestly think I could have predicted that exactly. An hr later and contact 5 would have been on the bus on the way back from the supermarket.

BTW it was an accident she had so no clue whatsoever in the morning what may happen.

I think it's reasonable to try to get there in an hour. I am not having a go at parents who work away at long distances at all, it must be really tough - but I would feel very uneasy if both me and my dh were not within an hour away, in case of emergency.

I have had 'the call' for my Reception ds, as I have said, and was just grateful that they recognised that he was poorly enough to need me. I am 15 minutes away, and DH is 40 minute away.

On an occasion when ds needed a lunchtime antibiotic dose, and I couldn't to school to sign the form to allow them to give it to him - teaching, obviously - I tried to whizz there in my lunchtime and wrote off my car . Point being, I am not unaware of the difficulties of working parents.

Your posts certainly haven't read like it. You have made me feel like shit.

AbigailS
have I missed it? what is your solution to the problem of children having accidents or becoming sick at school?