After School Cub worker drove DD home and left her there!

[Crabapple99]

I have an arrangement with one afterschool club worker that she takes my 10 year old daughter home for me once a week. Yesterday she was called away on a family emergency. Howerever, I wsn't contacted and told. If I had been, I would have left work early and collected DD myself. A different member of staff, one who I don't like much, and certainly wouldn't ever invite into my home, closed up the after school club 20 minutes early (DD was the only child left) forced DD to get into the car, drove her home, came in and looked around, then left her there alone. DD was very upset, as she hadn't wanted to get into the car. She has been told never to get into a car with anyone, even someone we know, unless she has permission from myself, her school teacher or one or two specific family friends. She did not have permission to get into this persons car, and I would not have agreed to this person driving my child anywhere, or to coming into my home. I tried to complain, but the after school club do not seem to think anything untoward has happened, and say the staff member was doing me a favour!

What a load of bollocks

No, Soupdragon, it isn't bollocks.

If you have 3 kids and work, then dealing with fetching and carrying over the 10 or so years they take from starting school to being self-suffient you are going to have to deal with literally thousands of pickups, a small % are going to go wrong, and some spectaculalrly so.

And if your child being taken safely home by a person you Do Not Like within the same arrangement is a Crisis, then boy do you have some lessons coming your way.

But it wasn't within the same arrangement. The arrangement was that her Dd was taken home and looked after if she couldn't get to ASC in time. On this occasion she was in plenty of time so there was no need for the arrangement to kick in, and the child was not looked after she was dumped.

What view would Ofsted take about private arrangements piggy-backing onto the formal asc setting?

In a weird way, I would like OP to take this up with Ofsted, just so we can find out what they think. Although their reaction would probably so draconian that it would end up destroying the chances any of us ever have of cheap trustworthy babysitters met thru ASCs and nurseries, etc.

Ofsted don't regulate nannies and babysitters - you can employ nursery staff to babysit as a private arrangement.

The after school club worker you don't like should have tried to contact you, and asked what you wanted to happen. If she couldn't contact you she should have stayed at they club, supervising your DD untill the official end of the session (you have paid for this) and then dropped her at home. (I'm presuming you DD is usually dropped off and left by the lady you like)

You need to think what you would like to happen if the nice lady cannot drop your DD home for some reason, and make sure the after school club are aware of this.

I'm just wondering, RitaMorgan, if it's the sort of thing Ofsted would like to rein in (they have a control freak approach to everything else).

Especially as the hand over of the child is normally not to a parent from ASC but rather into the custody of the ASC worker; hence this confusing mess. The two realms (ASC + private) are blurring together, and only because of the fact that that worker is at that ASC. I wonder if Ofsted would see the roles as completely separate or not. At what moment do the ASC policies stop and the ASC worker is on private time, for instance?

yes i agree this is a very grey area
Crabapple99 are you paying NI and tax for the nice lady because if you are not you are doing in illegally and could get fined at lot
does the nice lady have business insurance on her car ?

the nasty lady might well think that the nice lady does not get paid for taking your DD home so though it would be ok to take her home her self as a flavour .

also make your daughter knows how to use a phone a child that has it own key should be able to do this .

OP... I'm puzzled by the fact that you dislike this woman, your daughter is seemingly 'terrified' of her... yet you willingly allow your daughter to go to this club. How does that work?

I think your 'dislike' is the overriding factor here and your daughter has picked it up.

What would have been your preferred option? For your daughter to be left alone, outside the locked club? That's the only other scenario that could have happened, isn't it?

Obviously you need to put in some measures for the future - a way of contact for your daughter and maybe some emergency taxi money and a door key should something like this happen again.

I do think you're overreacting, because you're angry at this woman.

But it wasn't within the same arrangement. The arrangement was that her Dd was taken home and looked after if she couldn't get to ASC in time. On this occasion she was in plenty of time so there was no need for the arrangement to kick in, and the child was not looked after she was dumped.

This is probably going to shock you, but (i) errors of communication happen, especially (ii) in new situations, and (iii) other people then don't make the same decisions as you would since they don't have the same info (hmm..DM doesn't like me and they are having building done so I must not take DD home like my colleague does).

What would have been your preferred option? For your daughter to be left alone, outside the locked club? That's the only other scenario that could have happened, isn't it?

Presumably she would prefer that the ASC hadn't arbitrarily been closed early in which case she would have collected her dd herself and there would have been no issue whatsoever.

This is probably going to shock you, but (i) errors of communication happen, especially (ii) in new situations, and (iii) other people then don't make the same decisions as you would since they don't have the same info (hmm..DM doesn't like me and they are having building done so I must not take DD home like my colleague does).

i) This wasn't an error in communication it was a complete failure to even attempt communication.

ii) The new thing about the situation was that the ASC decided to close 20 mins early while a child was in their care. This is the point that is totally unacceptable.

iii) There was no need for anyone to be taking the dd home before the closing time of the ASC

It might be naive of me but I would expect as a minimum from an organisation that exists purely to look after children, that if they were for some reason unable to look after a child in their care, they would contact the parent and that if they couldn't get hold of the parent they would ensure the child was cared for until they could.

It's all very well saying a 10 yr old should be fine in this situation but what would they have done if it was a younger child? I assume the ASC does care for younger children too. If it was a 5 yr old they couldn't have just left them like that so they must have procedures and policies for what to do in a situation like this. These should be followed irrespective of the age of the child IMO.

Oh, and of course things go wrong sometimes, but surely the correct response to that, as an organisation, would be to look at what went wrong and make sure it didn't happen again. Not just to shrug shoulders and say nevermind.

I think someone mentioned this earlier. The likely scenario is that ASC worker thought she had to drop dd as a favor to her co-worker who had an emergency (or mum if she thought this was an unpaid arrangement?) .

She was willing to spend her own money on the petrol, but did not want to work more than her normal hours, especially as she had an evening event planned.

So she calculated 15-30 minutes to drop dd, look around and make sure house was safe and then drive back to the center, and left the center accordingly.

(The whole "I'll text if I am not coming" business I don't get. What if networks are down or slow or the ASC workers phone is out of battery or doesn't get signal/reception...just seems really strange to leave it all so last minute)

"The likely scenario is that ASC worker thought she had to drop dd as a favor to her co-worker who had an emergency (or mum if she thought this was an unpaid arrangement?)."

All that would have been resolved with a telephone call to the OP. She wouldn't have had to 'think' anything if she or the other two colleagues had just bothered to ask.

They had "just botherered" to drive her daughter home, presumably without charging anything. I'm guessing they would have "just bothered" to make a simple phone call if they thought it necessary.

They weren't being reckless.

Is it ok for an ASC to close early if all children have been collected? Hopefully we all think it is.

On this day, with 20 minutes to go, all the children had been collected except OP's DD. What would have happened if "nice" ASC worker had been there? She could then "collect" OP's DD meaning there were no children left so it was ok for the club to shut early.

Chances are she may not have received the very last minute text, assumed that OP was not coming to the after school club (reasonable assumption as to come to ASC + 45 minutes walk home would make for a very late arrival home for OP) and taken her home as she normally did. (albeit a bit early). Would this have been ok?

All that's happened is a different worker has taken OP's DD home.

Ah, this has been done to death. Realists and Cotton Wool people will never agree. Stiffens my resolve never to do people favours unlessthey are very good friends.

(My experience in the past is the sort of casual friend who asks a favour is often then the most likely to bitch if its not done letter perfect)

I have some sympathy for the colleague who helped out in an emergency. I think she can't be that bad or she wouldn't still be working at the ASC. I have doubts about some of the details of this thread.

I have some sympathy for the colleague who helped out in an emergency. I think she can't be that bad or she wouldn't still be working at the ASC. I have doubts about some of the details of this thread.

Agreed.

Beaten I hope they didn't charge anything to drive her home, since the OP has probably paid them up to closing time, which they brought forward by twenty minutes and the OP and was there fifteen minutes early to collect her own child.

They didn't need to take her daughter home at all.