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?

10 mins is totally unrealistic, the school should hold the child until a responsible adult can collect the child. Even the emergency contacts might not get there for 10 mins, they have lives and will not be sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring. I am lucky I only live a few mins walk away from dd school and a sahm but totally understand from a working parents perspective

I doubt that the school literally mean 10 mins-you´d have to be living next door/across the road.

I think that they were pissed off that your friend seemed unwilling even to try to find someone tbh.

THe school that my chikdren are at has a sick room but no one to sit with them-I´d hate to think of my ill child waiting for that long.

10min is ridiculous, even for SAHM! Are you not supposed to leave a 10min radius of the school during school hours? And working parents can't all leave their jobs at short notice.

As for emergency contacts, we'd be in the same boat. We know a few parents at primary, but we are not particularly close they have other obligations rather than looking after our children. Plus, if it was meningitis or some other serious problem, I think the school should take the initiative - hopefully they have someone with at least minimal medical knowledge? - and phone 999 rather than handing the child over to a 3rd party. At our daughter's secondary school, which is across town, we don't know any other parents and there is really no one we could ask to do this.

And why don't schools have sick rooms any more?

I agree that 10 mins is ridiculous, and that the school is genuinely unreasonable. But I would say that this is a significant reason why we never moved out of London to the leafy suburbs. Not so much now they're school age, but certainly when they were nursery age I wanted to know that if I got a call (which I often did) and it really was an energency (which it usually wasn't) I could jump in a taxi, leave my work unsaved and my computer on, and be there in 20 minutes.
The thing about train commutes is that a 45 minute commute is only that long if the train is due at that time - if you suddenly need to travel at a random moment in the middle of the day then it can be much longer.

But of course that's not an choice open to everyone; house prices have moved considerably since we bought our inner city hovel and as someone said above you might find yourself moving jobs frequently.

iscream, I can't see that you could name some random childcare provider as an emergency contact. Do they not have other children to look after? They might even take these children out to the park, or the beach, or anywhere else, and not want or be able to rush back with all their charges in tow and pick up a sick child, in order that that child gets picked up a little earlier than if they have to wait for their parents.

10 minutes is unreasonable, but there's a big difference between not being available sometimes because of shopping, visits and appointments and no-one will ever be able to get to a child any quicker than in an hour and a half...

There aren't spare members of staff without jobs to do that can sit with an ill child, I'm the emergency contact for some of my neighbours - whether their children are infectious or not, because it's better to be lying on my sofa till someone can pick them up than to be stuck at school alone.

In the case of a medical emergency of course schools phone ambulances, but they prefer a parent to accompany the child, otherwise they lose a member of staff to do it and funnily enough children get upset if they have to go to hospital without someone to look after them.

I'm a little surprised how many people think it's unreasonable to ask a friend to pick up a sick child. If any of my friends called to ask me, I'd do it. I don't think it's so onerous to give someone a cuddle and put them on the sofa with a bucket.

when people say 'schools used to be more sensible, what has changed?' I would think that one thing that has changed is a culture of higher expectations wrt the way schools supervise children.

Someone said earlier that a school can't ever leave a child on their own so if a child is left with the secretary that means the secretary can't leave the room. I don't believe for a moment this was the case in the 70s.

Exactly about the ambulance thing. Either 8 mins I think, for urban areas and 14 for rural.

The school are BU. There are very people who would be able to get to their child's school in under 10 mins I'd imagine, especially if they work.

Also, we had sick rooms when we were at school and if your mum or friend couldn't collect you, then you laid on the camp bed under a blanket with a bucket until they could.

Obviously if someone can pick up, then that's better, but the school are acting in loco parentis.

About the not collecting other people's children though - bit harsh to not collect. If they already have a rash (and it's contagious), it's most likely that this child has been contagious for a while before the rash appeared and others have caught it anyway.

And it it was sickness, I think I'd help the friend collect their child and risk catching the bug myself, rather than not pick up the child.

I'm afraid I haven't read all the posts because there are so many so I might be repeating someone else here:

10 minutes is extreme, but the school is not being unreasonable in wanting the child picked up asap. Schools don't employ people just to look after 1 child; they have other duties and responsibilities.

Why does your friend and her DH live so far from where they work? It strikes me as very odd that their poor child is at school so far away from his parents with no one to come quickly if he really needed them. Emergency contacts are essential.

I would happily pick up someone else's sick child now I'm a SAHM because frankly if my children get a minor illness it's not a disaster, but I wouldn't have taken the risk as a WOHM because it could have ended with serious problems at work if I'd had to take any time off to look after them or got sick yet again myself.

The 10 minutes was pretty unrealistic, but I suppose that both parties just want the best for the child eg. to be cared for by their parent or given medical attention as soon as possible.

Schools will do their best to care for sick children, but they just don't have the facilities to do it properly. I have taught in a number of schools and only one had a proper room designated for medical purposes. Another had a fold out bed in a sort of alcove off a room that also housed a large photocopier. In all other cases children have had to sit on chairs in the office or reception area. School nurse? They visit a couple of times a term for health checks.

Some posters have mentioned schools in the 70's 'just getting on with it'. Yes, they did - but on the other hand we are lucky that schools today have child protection and wellbeing at the centre of what they do. I attended a primary school in the late 70's/early 80's and remember falling over and hitting my head hard in the playground one day (no adult nearby). I was dizzy, feeling sick and probably had concussion - I told my teacher that I was feeling ill and that my eyes were funny, I also just wanted to lay my head down and sleep. He was a kind man and arranged for me to sit outside in the shade where it was cooler - but looking back at my symptoms someone really should have probed a bit further and sought medical attention. Oh - a few years later there was a huge scandal when the headteacher left his wife for an ex-pupil. Yes, a primary ex-pupil. Child protection certainly wasn't what it is now...

So, on the other hand the flip side of schools taking much more care of children is that they do need to make higher demands on parents.

HOwever, I still do agree that 10 minutes is unrealistic and hopefully that was just the first number that came into the school secretary's head to represent 'as soon as possible'.

School are being totally U.

Society has changed. Mummies no longer all get booted out of work the moment they get pg and spend the rest of their lives in their pinnies at home.

Millions of families have two working parents, an hour / 1.5 hour commute is hardly unusual.

Whatever happened to sickrooms?

I remember long semi-drowsy afternoons in the sick room waiting for a parent.

At my dc's school there is a sick room and they get hot choc.

I think school is saying 10 minutes because they mean 'quickly'. They are unlikely to have a problem if the mother took half an hour, but one and a quarter hours is a long time to wait. They probably think the mother should have taken a couple of minutes to ask a colleague to cancel her meetings and then jumped in the car. Telling the school that she was going to take 15 minutes to wind things up at work may well have conveyed the message that she wasn't taking their needs to have the child collected seriously.

NosyRosie what a ridiculous post! You mention that the school want the child picked up asap. ASAP- As soon as possible. That is what the mum was going to do- get there as soon as possible.

As for calling the boy a 'poor child' because his parents work a whole hour- a whole hour! away from his school!? How hand-wringingly laughable. How dare they get themselves jobs away from school. I lived an hour away from my school and my mum was a sahm who didn't drive! You would have called social services on her neglectful ass soon as look at her I'm sure.

It's not odd, NosyRosie: it's completely normal in some parts of the country (like London). My understanding of an emergency contact was always somebody who could be contacted who would be willing to drop everything and be there, or organise someone else to be there. So I've put down my mum, who is 90 minutes away but would be prepared to drop everything to get something sorted. It's a different role from the person who probably would come get the child and look after them for an hour till I or someone got home: that would probably be another local mum. But no mum would want to guarantee their availability, so most of us have a small pool of contacts that we or the emergency contact would ring round.

I do understand how difficult this is for schools, but they need to live in the real world and not expect parents to be instantly available (though parents shouldn't take the piss, either). Of course making a sick child wait in a corridor for an hour is not an ideal solution, but IME combining paid work with parenthood offers very few ideal solutions and rather a lot of bodged together ones.

I am one of those rare people who live within 10 minutes of the school and also have emergency back up within 10 minutes of school, but even this isn't foolproof. My parents are my back up, but they are entitled to go shopping/take the dog for a walk etc during school hours.

It's not reasonable to expect people to either live or work close to the school. Who has the luxury of choice in this economic climate? Any headteacher who seriously expects that is a stupid twat and not fit to be in charge imo.

I would also be reluctant to ask a friend to collect a sick child from school and I would be reluctant to collect someone else's. Most other SAHM's have babies at home and I'd not want to expose mine to anything contagious and I wouldn't fancy clearing up after someone else's vomiting child. I know the school doesn't want to do this either, but I would feel it is more their responsibility than mine. They just want to get rid of the problem and pass it on asap.

Slightly separately, schools often interfere with things that I would say are the responsibilities of the parents (I'm thinking of the lunch box patrols). If they want to take this on then it's a case of accepting the rough with the smooth and that means looking after the child until the parent can get there.

"Why does your friend and her DH live so far from where they work?"

Hahahahahahahahahahah

Can you honestly think of no reasons at all?

Wow all these emergencies happening all over the shop it's a wonder people dare ever go out! won't somebody think of the children!

Children and top private and selective state schools often live miles and miles from the school.

I don't see the schools shouting and yelling about it in those cases.

When I was at school, I spent hours in the sick room and waited for the school bus to take me home (over an hour away). Even when my entire leg swelled up after being stung by a bee, I stayed in school and got the school bus home as normal. The school's attitude was that unless a child needed urgent medical attention, they were the school's responsibility until home time.

Yes. Exactly.

When did it change? And for the worse?

Emergency in my vocabulary means ambulance. If there is no emergency, an hour and a quarter is a perfectly reasonable time.

The school IBTotallyU.