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?

It is not the job of schools to be more accommodating of working parents for free. Breakfast clubs, after school clubs etc for working parents need to be paid for, and so does "extra accommodation" of children whose parents cannot be available in emergencies.

10 mins is totally unreasonable.
However if your friend does infact have an emergency contact then she should have used them. Putting them down as an emergency contact then feeling uncomfortable about asking them to pick her ill child up is silly, thats what they are for and a far better than leaving him sat at school ill.

I think the school is unreasonable. Yes the parent should come to pick up the child as soon as they can, but it's not always possible for a parent (or other contact) to be 10 minutes away from the school at all times. Even a full-time SAHP may not be able to do that, as many families live more than 10 minutes from the school these days!

And not everyone will have a relative or close friend living/working within 10 minutes of the school either, least of all one who's able to drop whatever they're doing (work, looking after their own children, etc) at a moment's notice to go and pick up someone else's child!

'Surely every school has someone who (a first aider or nurse) who would look after a sick child until their parents could get there?'

No. Do you think the PTA might fund one?
It's usually the secretaries or the people in the office that keep an eye on them, whilst fielding phone calls, accepting deliveries and coping with the 1,001 demands placed on them during the day.
Child usually gets a blanket and a bucket and occasional checks.

All schools should have a sick bay where a sick child can be isolated until a parent/carer can get there to pick up. If they are seriously concerned that the child needs immediate attention, they should call an ambulance and have the child taken to A & E, though good luck with getting an ambulance in under 10 mins!

I suppose, before mobile phones, more women were SAHMs, but what if they were out shopping, at the hairdressers, at the doctor's themselves or even just having a cuppa with neighbour? Families were also less likely to have two cars and the family car was usually used by the father to get to and from his place of work. True, few children were at school further away from home than walking distance (at least at primary school), but I remember it used to take more than 30 minutes for me to walk to school and my mother certainly wouldn't have had the money for a taxi! By the time I went to senior school I had to travel to the other side of the city, as I was at the grammar school. Designated buses were laid on at the beginning and the end of the school day but, during the day, mum would have had to have got two buses and it would have taken her well over an hour to get there! BUT, both my primary and secondary schools had a full time matron and a sick bay precisely for occasions such as these. On the other hand, because more women were SAHMs, a child was much less likely to be sent to school in the morning if they were a bit off colour. I am amazed at the state some children are sent to school in simply because mum can't, or would find it extremely difficult to, take time off work these days. Not saying that this was the case with your friend, OP, children can go downhill very quickly indeed, I know.

The problem with mobile phones is that now we are all supposed to be immediately available to everyone and people get impatient if we aren't! Also, we have become so affluent, generally speaking, in comparison that people expect you to take a taxi even when you can't afford it!

People posting that parents should live no more than an hour away from work and should move if they are further away, are living in cloud cuckoo land.

We are going through a recession at the moment. Jobs are hard to come by. I know lots of people in the private sector who are forced to work They can't find permanent work. lots of short term contracts for different employers. These can be 3 or 6 months. You don't move house to be closer to a short term job.

Others have had to take a job with travel further away than they would like. The school is BVU.

About 50% of the time I am in central London, so an hour away from dd's school, it would prob take dh 45-90 min to get to her. We also both do this travel on the tube so would be out of contact for the journey

We have an extensive list of contacts (my parents, MIL) but I cant guarantee that any would be there in under an hour on a certain day, they are more on the list in case something awful happens to me and I cant pick up and dh is also hurt or is abroad at the time.

If my dd did suddenly out of the blue develop meningitis, I would prob prefer her to be in school than picked up by a SAHM friend of mine. I think her class teacer prob knows her better than my friends necessarily do, school staff should have some kind of first aid cert and are in proper loco parentis so can consent for emergency medical procedures if required.

In the past - 70's and 80's, from my memory, many parents didn't have a phone at all. I remember either:

1. Children being left in the care of the school secretary until home time. At primary we only had a nurse who visited for checks etc, she wasn't there all the time.
2. If child knew mother was at home, a friend would walk the sick child home. I clearly remember this happening.
3. If a child was really ill an ambulance or Dr would be called. I remember this happening in primary school for a diabetic child.

Schools did not have TA's either. I think schools can be so precious now. No they are not there to provide child care. But they should be able to look after a sick child until someone gets there.

If a child has meningitis (or suspected meningitis) they should be taken straight to hospital....

If the school knows that the parents might take a while to get to the school and have serious concerns over a child's health they should get them to casualty.

i think both the school and your friend are being unreasonable.

10 mins isn't realistic but then equally having 2 contacts which are always over an hour away isn't either. She needs to sort a contact who can take her son in an emergency and be there within an hour, something neither she nor her husband can do. It's unfair on the child and unfair on the school. Schools no longer have the resource to have a full time nurse on hand during the school day, and i for one wouldn't want money spent on this. How often would the nurse be sat around twiddling her thumbs doing nothing?

Maybe this is a business op for someone, get yourself first aid trained, charge a small retainer and be available 9-3 5 days a week to collect sick children from school.

Good morning - this thread has grown since I started it and then went to bed last night!

I am my friend's emergency contact. She has another friend locally but she has 2 children at home too. Neither of us would have wanted to pick up a sick child. I am the emergency contact for at least half a dozen mums. But there are certain circumstances I would not pick up for - D&V for one.

In my view, an 'emergency' when I am required is when the parents are stuck and can't pick up the child by end of school, or if the school closes early they need someone to pick the child up. In that case I would gladly pick the child up.

If the child is hurt the school should call for an ambulance, but even then neither me or the other mum can go with the child to hospital because we have small children at home to care for.

To one poster (can't remember the name) who said my friend was happy to let the after school club pick her ill son up, you have misread my OP. My friend wasn't happy to leave her sick child with the after school club or school, she wanted to get to her son, she purely uses the before and after school club for childcare.

To those of you who think one parent should work within an hour of school. That is totally unrealistic. I have to go back to work soon as my husband lost his job and took a 40% pay cut. However very local jobs just don't pay enough to warrant the childcare costs. I have to look further afield but the next nearest towns are at least a 40 min drive away. Alternatively it is back to the City, which would be an hour by train plus at least 20 mins commute either side of the train journey.

I would be stuffed ds school is over hr away by car ,3 and 1/2 hrs by public transport so if he needs to come home in that much of emergency they be better of taking to hospital and nope I can not move nearer either as have dc in local schools to where we live

So what do people on here deem to be an emergency for a friend to pick up children? I specifically mean another mum friend, as opposed to family. Family are different, but few people have family living close by anymore.

I do not think an ill child is for a friend to pick up.

The mum friends who are at home are mainly at home with small children (which is why they are at home). Why would we want to pick up an ill child.

I always had a designated friend who would pick up my DD in an emergency.

I agree that parents have to take work where they can.

As I said, no easy solutions...

I agree that many SAHM's have young children and wouldn't want to pick up a possibly contagious child. And most CM's would feel the same. It really needs to be family and if you haven't got any close by, the school need to wait for you to get there.

For a year I was a SAHM with 3 under 5's and 1 child at school. Although I was about 15 mins walk away, it would have taken me much longer to get there.

School is unreasonable.

I don't see the point of being down as an emergency contact if your not willing to be contacted in an emergency.

I am emergency contact for my nephew and if needed i would have no qualms about picking him up from nursery. I would rather do that than him be sat in nursery feeling ill.

My children are older, but when they were at primary school, we arranged emergency cover between us, much like you have done OP. We did, however, pick up each others ill children and look after them till their parents could get home. It would have been an hour till his mum got in - surely you could have let him lie down in front on the TV with a blanket and a bucket? Noone likes cleaning up puke (least of all me!), but I'd always collect a friend's I'll child rather than have them sit outside the office feeling miserable for an hour.

DYAC - ill! Not I'll

I have two toddlers and wouldnt think twice about picking up my friends child if they were ill as im their emergency contact, not their if it suits me and wont cause myself too much hassle contact!

Its not like its a regular thing these emergencies

Actually I am being deliberately contentious. Of course if my friend had phoned me I would have picked her son up; it was her who felt it was wrong to pass off her sick and possibly contagious child on to me when I had a 3 year old at home.

However, is a sick child an emergency that needs picking up within 10 mins? Or is a sick child something that can wait as much as up to 1 1/2 hours for a parent to come themselves? This is going to sound harsh on the child, but surely a sick child is an inconvienience to the school, not really an emergency.

Why should any other parent pick up an ill child that isn't theirs if a child minder wouldn't?! Surely the same reasons apply to a sahm as to a child minder. Nobody wants illness in their home!

School is being ridiculous. I'm in the London suburbs, too, and most people who work have to travel for an hour or more.

Of course it makes sense to have back-up. But it's not realistic to think that most working parents can have an emergency contact who could guarantee to go straight to the school: you'd have to pay for that. Most of us, surely, would be ringing round the other mums to find someone who could get down to the school and hold the fort till we got back.

That would take half an hour, minimum.

A sick child needs picking up as soon as it is possible. It is much nicer for the child to be curled up on a sofa with a bit of
Cbeebies than sat in the entrance of the school for what feels like hours waiting to be collected.

Dd's school would contact social services in an emergency as they share the responsibility of dd with us.

School have no expectation that dh (teacher in a different county) and school counsellor (so have phone on once an hour to check it) would be able to get there within an hour.

So they would naturally use their judgement for an ambulance or call social services if emergency treatment was needed.

They are not allowed to release her to any randomer obviously so that's why social services is the emergency contact.