AIBU to want to feel safe at work?

[Bellini81]

I work part time in a school, since I started it has been getting progressively worse, lots of staff changes, no real structure, very good teachers leaving and being replaced by temp staff that stay a few terms then leave and so on.

I get a bit of attitude from the pupils but mostly they respect me and I used to love working there and enjoy my job. But recently I have been dreading going to work.

Last term I was attacked by a pupil, to cut a long story short I caught him spitting at a child and when I went over to intervene he spat in my face and started attacking the other pupils around him so I scooped him up and took him up to the heads office immediately. He punched, kicked and scratched me the whole way there and tried strangling me with the scarf I was wearing all in front of the other pupils.
When I eventually got him up to the office and someone else took over, I showed the head my injuries, as by now I was actually bleeding from both hands and her response was to show me her bite marks and scratches from a previous outburst from the same boy... That was that.

Today was the worst day ever, I got told to shut my mouth from one boy and then a fight broke out and I had to run over with the other adults to break it up and during the chaos my wrist got bent backwards and now I can hardly move it. I came home and had a good cry.

I am looking for another job but a term time job is quite hard to come by and I need the money so badly at the moment I have to stick it out until I have another secure job. But I am bloody miserable and am feeling a bit sorry for myself at the moment. Surely I should feel safe at work but I don't.

[cansu]

There is no way you should be picking up a child to restrain them at all. Only staff who are trained to restrain should do so. In the situations you describe you remove the other children and send for help. If this means a classroom is trashed then so be it. You need to ask for incidents to be logged. Put everything in writing. Ask for risk assessments for the child you are concerned about. Stand back when he or she kicks off. Protect the other children but do not put yourself in harms way. Your first duty is to keep yourself safe. I am shocked at the practices in the school. I work with slightly older children and there are maybe three or four seniors members of staff who are trained to restrain and are allowed to do so. All children who have a known risk of violence have a risk assessment and there are set procedures of how to deal with them.

[MostWicked]

There are no circumstances when it would be acceptable to carry a child who was having a meltdown, down a corridor - regardless of training.
As a parent, I would be furious if this had happened to my child.
Clear the room of other children and call for help.

[DisgraceToTheYChromosome]

I'll echo MDS as the hardest job in school; I did it for 6 months while taking a break from HGV driving.

Thing is, we were told "you do not touch, ever". We had quite a few challenging kids, and if they had a meltdown you got the specialists in, after clearing the area. Amd everything was logged, right down to verbal abuse.

[SallyMcgally]

Oh Bellini, that sounds dreadful. sorry not to have anything more helpful to say.