to expect my colleague's Year 7 twins to be able to get the bus to school?

[MaryQueenOfSpots]

One of my colleagues has just moved house and the twin children are still at their previous school which is a 30 minute bus ride from the new house. Colleague has requested change of hours to accommodate driving children to school in the morning as "they are too young to take the bus". Colleague's DP works irregular shifts so cannot be depended upon for this.

It will affect the rest of the team because the colleague will not be able to attend the daily ward meeting at 8, so cover will need to be found. This is not impossible, but will not be as good as current situation. Continuity will be lost and junior unqualified staff will need to go instead of qualified colleague. There is likely to be some grumbling by another colleague who also has Year 7. child but allows them to make their own way to school. At the same time, other colleagues have had flexible arrangements made when returning from mat leave.

I am a very inexperienced team leader trying to sort out what is fair? Is it really unacceptable for 11 year olds to take a bus to school? I did when I was that age, but that was back in the dark ages...

No, I wouldn't like my 11 year old to have to make a daily 30 minute bus ride.

She has the right to mke the request. The request can be declined if there are significant business reasons to do so. The larger the business the more likely it is that reasonable adjustments can be made.

I think you must focus on the provision of an effective service at work. Your opinion and that of anyone else about whether her children can get the bus or not is totally irrelevant and if your colleague picks that up and takes it to the unions any decision will be appealed and overturned.

The worker chose to move house to a place that made it difficult to get the dc to school. He shouldn't have done it with the assumption that his employer will change the way they organise their business to accommodate him. Hellas hires to work a specific job, with set hours so shouldn't expect other people to do part of his job for him, which is effectively what will happen.

I would say no, if it wasn't easy for the business to accommodate and wasn't fair to other employees.

CouthyMow, the point is, no one knows if the twins in this case have SENs or not and it seems like some people expect the parent to either declare to the employer that her twins have SENs or let her twins catch the bus. They could have SENs which aren't diagnosed yet, which would add a further complication.

When I said it's horrible and really hurtful, I meant in real life, not on a message board, such as if the OP said that to the parent whilst discussing the issue or when people look disapprovingly at your child with SEN and say that children of that age should be doing xyz.

But a child may have a problem getting the bus due to bullying, social anxiety, travel sickness or a bladder problem, not just SENs.

Jan
The general starting point is that an 11 yo without any additional needs is capable of getting a bus to school and many children of that age do so every day. My 9 yo is capable of catch a bus home from school a couple of times a week. I have a friend with a son of a similar age who has SN who couldn't do the same.

They are entitled to make this request but if it affects the way the business operates and requires a reorganisation of working practices etc it may not be a reasonable request if the children are NT and there are no other issues. If there are extenuating circumstances then I think the colleague needs to disclose them to the team leader so a decision can be made that balances all the relevant issues.

OP, forget about your colleague's children and concentrate on the impact her request on the business. She has made her decision re: her DCs travel arrangements and it is not you place to change her mind or find alternative solutions for her. To do anything other than make a decision based on business reasons would probably be a breech of the process and might land you in trouble.

Whether the children have SEN or not (and my dc doesn't have special needs, I just think 30mins too much to travel every day, twice a day), it's not for the OP to judge whether she thinks they ought to be travelling by bus at that age, that's a decision for the parent to make.

And what marriedinwhiteagain said.

SEN is irrelevant in the context of a request for flexible working. It is the needs of the service that dictate whether you can agree or not

You can have huge amounts of understanding and sympathy and even agree with the request but not be able to grant it.

Exactly Jins. When my DS started school there was no way my company could have managed to support the change in hours I would have needed to do for him (he has mild SN). They very kindly (I mean that!) made me redundant instead.

A business can't accomodate everyone, - although of course when they can, they should. I think (not in a company atm so a bit out of touch) in most big companies now anyone can request flexible working - it's not about what the reasons behind it are, it's whether it works for the business.

This is A Good Thing in my book, because if more people work flexibly where they want to and where it doesn't harm the business it's the only way to change the culture where it's expected that women will work pt to look after the children.

As others have said, this isn't about whether Y7 twins can take the bus, but about whether the business can support the request.

Having said that, in real life you would look at individual circumstances because you are human.

I would suggest accepting the proposal, making it clear that the situation would be reviewed in November or at Christmas.

Would attending in the better qualified staff member's place at your morning meetings be a good development opportunity for them? Does the meeting have to take place at 8am (I assume it does as you mention that it's a ward, but just wondering)?

I agree that you should not base your decision on whether or not your colleague should be driving his kids to school - that is not what your role is. Your role is to consider whether or not you as a manager can accommodate it, eg by other people taking on additional responsibilities. Can your team function properly and fulfil its duties if the guy is late every morning? Or is it something that just cannot be worked around?

Also, and while I know it's not relevant at all to the question the OP has asked but there have been a lot of posts on the subject, some Y7 pupils just would not be able to do this journey. I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of this in years to come because of parents working. What I mean is that if you work, you pay for someone else to look after your child and often to take your child to school. A childminder is not going to allow the child to build up freedom gradually in terms of getting to school or going out and about after school, and if the parent works then there is no time for them to do that themselves. So you have the situation where pupils in Y6 have never taken themselves even part-way to school, crossed a road without supervision etc, much less got on a bus. That isn't because they are mollycoddled or anything like that but because of the logistics and practicalities of having wrap-around childcare for children whose parents work. To suddenly go from being accompanied and looked after every hour of the day to negotiating a bus journey plus walk at either end is just too much to put on the child.

a child may have a problem getting the bus due to bullying, social anxiety, travel sickness or a bladder problem, not just SENs.

Absolutely.

I am fortunate in that when my own Y7 has had issues on the bus (bullying) I was told to collect him for a while. But then the business can cope with that.

I wouldn't want my year 7 to get the bus to school and I certainly wouldn't want my manager at work telling me that I should.

However she shouldn't have moved without sorting this out first!

If the employee has children that cannot manage the bus journey, then he shouldn't have moved house to a place that requires them to do so.

I don't think it is up to the employer to worry about how the employee's children get to school - that's something the employee should have sorted before moving.

People are making this far more combatative than it needs to be. Work with him. His partner works shifts, surely there must be a compromise! Im thinking something like 2 days a week hes late, one day they get a taxi and 2 days his partner does something. Review in june by which time the twins will be joining y8 in a few weeks.

Not saying that is the answer - just making the point its not all or nothing

I'm 99% certain that once a flexible working request is agreed it becomes a permanent change to the employees contract - I'm not sure that it would be possible to review the change after a number of months. It would be lovely to offer the colleague a temporary arrangement to tide her over the transition, but I think you need some advice on how to do that legally if that is the route you choose to go down.

personally i wouldnt,unless it was a school bus provided by the school,even then id offer to drop them off.

This has nothing to do with the age of the children, it's about whether or not you should or should not have flexible working patterns for people with external commitments

You know it's bloody miserable and lowers morale for the people working for you if you judge every decision they make about their own personal life within a normal boundary. You need to weigh up whether you want a happy a productive workforce who have a more flexible approach to working life and hours or you want a rigid non flexible, non home life friendly environment where people work 9-5 and want to give nothing more because it's so rigid. I think most people would prefer the former.

The bloke wants to drop his daughters off at school, it's hardly something to get your knickers ina twist about

Pip, it's possible to trial a period of flexible working but once the trial is passed then it would be a permanent change, I think.

This is why the employee needs to do a form - do they want a permanent change, a reduction in pay, longer hours working at the end of the day etc. If he actually just wants flexibility for six weeks or so for the rest of term, maybe taking holiday or unpaid leave would be best on a temporary basis.

It may be a cost issue. Two bus passes will be very expensive - but why not say this? They should have taken that into account when decideing to live where they do.

Amber, I know this isn't the real point of the thread, but why wouldn't you?

I don't think it is up to you to decide either way whether your colleague's children should get the bus to school or not. The real question is whether you can accommodate the request or not.

We/you can't know the full circumstances of her decision to take them to school and they are her business.
Either tell her no, and wait for her to find another job, or tell her yes and move the meeting to 9am. You can't worry about how others will feel, all you can do is either be flexible or not for her, depending on her performance, how valuable she is to the company and how much you would need to change everyone's routine to accomodate her request.

The thing is it depends very much on the twins.

My dc are very different.
I can depend on dd1 being in the right place at the right time, and she would be thoroughly reliable in catching the bus. She might not enjoy it, but she would see it as something she had to do and would do it without complaining. But, if she was having problems like bullying then she wouldn't tell anyone until it was an absolutely huge issue. So I'd probably be happy with her on the bus.

Dd2 would probably catch the bus... most of the time. She's a bit of a daydreamer, and would probably miss it a few times where she was reading rather than actually putting her shoes on if I wasn't there to hassle her out. Also if I wasn't there to hassle her out, I'd suspect there would be a few days that I arrived home to find that she had decided she was "too ill" and had stayed at home. She'd probably love the independance of catching the bus, but I would hear every problem about it too. So I'd probably be happy with her taking the bus, but I'd want to see her onto it.

Ds would look at it as an opportunity to mess around with his mates. I'm not sure I'd (he's only 5 but I'm extrapolating) trust him not to try something dangerous... I would be skeptical on him taking the bus unless I knew those on the bus with him were fairly responsible types and not likely to join in with silly behaviour.

And as someone else said, I have a friend who takes her dd to school by car, having expected her to bus. Because they discovered that she gets travel sick on the bus, that's sick everywhere on the bus type travel sick, not faintly queezy.

You can't say 11yo twins= okay on the bus (or any other children) unless you know the children as well as their parents do.

Whether they can catch the bus now or not isn't really relevant as the flexible working arrangement will be in place beyond year 7.

It really is down to whether the business can manage the flexibility with no adverse issues. If small changes can be made to allow it then you probably should allow it. If not then you'll have to say no.