To feel really upset that a mum sent her child to school ill again

[Yesitismeagain]

I work in a primary school. One boy (age 9) cried today because he felt so unwell. He was ill yesterday (temperature and feeling ill with it) and his parents were called early, but they didn't come till normal pick up.

Today he was back in, but was obviously very unwell from the start. The school phoned by 9.30am to come and get him. He was crying, shivering and just lying on the floor in the 'sick room' (a small room off the office).

By 2pm a parent still hadn't arrived. The office were told that the neither parent could come as they work.

Is it just me that this is neglect?

Dabs, don't most people have to make that call at the beginning of the day, though?

In their circs, either DH or I would have worked from home but that obviously isn't an option here.

Omg!! Patrick was sick at school today and Sarah and Mike didn't show up?! Shit bags.

I'm amazed so many people seem to think it's acceptable for a parent to put themselves in a situation where they may be totally unable to go to their ill child for maybe hours at a time with no back-up arrangement whatsoever; and to dump that child on someone else to look after whether they've got the capacity to do so or not. All you people who say"That's just the way it is", would that still be the case if the poorly child you took to school turns out to have meningitis? And would you take the same view about using the school as child care if it weren't free? What would you do in the school holidays if this happens and the child minder refuses to take your child?

Essentially what you are saying is that your job is more important than the school's priorities. It's all right to expect the school to take a teaching assistant away from another child who sorely needs that assistant, just so as to watch yours. It's all right to put on to that untrained TA the responsibility of comforting your child, cleaning him up if he vomits or has diarrhoea, deciding whether that rash he's developing is trivial or a sign of meningitis. It's all right to expose hundreds of other children to infection. And what if your child is not the only ill child in school that day? What is the school supposed to do then?

If you have a child, it is absolutely your responsibility to look after that child properly. Looking after your child properly does not mean leaving in school for hours when you've been told he's ill and needs to come home now. And if that means you have in place back-up, paid if necessary, so be it. If that means you can't take the job you wanted because it's too far away or they really would sack you if you had to leave to look after your child, so be it. It's a choice you made. You cannot dump the consequences of that choice on other people without so much as asking them beforehand.

What paid back up plan would work, Ici?

being at school instead of home isn't a danger to him.

But how does a parent know that at the beginning of the day? They have no idea what the school will do and whether they have anyone to sit with the child. Suppose, for instance, the school has absolutely no-one who can stay with that child and they decide to lie him down in the first-aid room and hope he can sleep it off. What's going to happen if he suddenly takes a turn for the worse and, say, his appendix bursts, or he starts fitting, or the meningitis that has been cooking suddenly kicks in in a big way?

And, before anyone points it out, obviously he can take a turn for the worse at home, and maybe the parent won't notice that immediately either. But the point is that if he goes home the parent doesn't have the responsibility for a few hundred other children, and the parent knows their child best and is more likely to detect what is unusual for that child.

Yanbu. My child is in pre school but I'd collect her if she were ill. Luckily she's rarely I'll, but I'd have no problem taking a sick day to look after her, unfortunately as a parent you're not allowed to be ill yourself

Yonic, it depends on the circumstances. I know a couple, for instance, who have a child who has a condition which means that from time to time he gets very ill and can't go into school, or may become ill whilst in school. They are both in responsible jobs which they can't leave quickly. They therefore employ a nanny.

Obviously not everyone can afford that option. However, the chances are that if you are in a job with such a heavy level of responsibility that you really are that indispensable, you probably can afford it. And if you are in a low paid job such as nursing where the reality is you are fairly indispensable because of low staffing, you are nevertheless entitled to tell your employers that you have to go and they will have to get cover in.

And if you are in a job where they have such disregard for the law and staff welfare that they would sack you for going to a sick child, and if you really can't organise some sort of cover, then you really have to think whether you are actually doing anyone any favours by doing that job at all.

Hello. OP again. This thread has surprised me by the strength of feeling. I've looked into what legal protection there is for parents. There is a law called "Time off for dependants". This is a "reasonable" unpaid time off to arrange alternative care for dependants (be it a child, adult, parent etc).

Case precedents have determined that "reasonable" is up to 24 hours. So if the parent gets a call to come and collect from school, then they can. However, within 1 day they have to come back to work. The time is not to care for the dependant, it is to set up alternative care when the usual care breaks down for whatever reason.

So as long as your child is not ill for longer than 24 hours, you are okay. (Sarcasm)

Both me and dsis have asthma. The schools (private) looked after ventolins in junior and we went there to get it. Never sent home for mum/dad to deal with.

Kids will catch colds, ive had lits in last few yrs since having kids even without dc in nursery. Its a fact of life. All it takes is someone sneezing metres away, or onto a surface.
Schools seem to encourage kids coming in with all except d&v.
I have sympathy for those with asthma/immunosuppressed but germs are everywhere.
If schools can deal with nut allergic kids and diabetics, seems crazy some wont give paracetamol.
What about boarding school or school trips - would you be called to pick up from abroad/london?

It is sad that children are sent to school when they are sick but sometimes people do not have any choice

People always have a choice, sometimes they just take the choice that they think is most convenient and will cause them the least hassle regardless of the impact on an unwell child. Sending a child into school knowing that they are unwell might, as others have said, cause significant problems for a child who is immunocompromised but don't let that get in the way of your apparent lack of choice. Do you think it is okay to compromise the health of a child who is immunocompromised because you find it difficult to get the day off work? How would you feel if your actions put a child in the hospital high dependency unit?

seems crazy some wont give paracetamol.

That's because paracetamol is over the counter. Schools can only give prescribed medicine with a pharmacy label on.

I'm picturing an alternative AIBU scenario here:

I agreed yesterday to look after my neighbour's child for a couple of days, on the basis that I had contact numbers for her and her husband, and I also made sure I had a couple of other contact numbers just in case. I have six children of my own and am also looking after my sister's three children. Yesterday the neighbour's child became ill with a temperature and I phoned her and her husband, but neither came for several hours. This morning they turned up on my doorstep with the child, said he was better, pushed him through the door and dashed off. However, it became very obvious within a few minutes that he was still ill, to the extent that he was lying on the floor crying and shivering. I phoned both parents but neither was answering. I phoned their emergency contacts, but they said they couldn't come to collect him. When I eventually got through to the parents they said they couldn't come because they were working.

WIBU to phone their employers? How about the police or social services?

I wonder precisely how many Mumsnetters faced with that scenario would be shrugging their shoulders and saying poor parents, maybe they had no choice, you should just suck it up, OP?

Is that true though or a myth/ h&s gone mad.
I used to be given paracetamol at school.
The nursery were happy to take paracetamol/nurofen for my child.

School is compulsory, Ici, and I believe some benefits will be affected if parents don't take available work once children are of school age.

Yes, arrangements can include taking short notice annual leave, bit obviously not possible in all workplaces.

Wards have minimum legal staffing levels. I thinks its two trained nurses. So a nurse would have to wait for a replacement to arrive. If she left without doing this she could be struck off.

That's why I had to bring my sick child to work Chunderella .There were only two of us on the shift for 30 patients as some one had rung in sick and no cover had been sorted , so I had to organise someone to come from another ward to cover while I went for him . I begged the site co-ordinator for help but they were of the view , my child , my problem .

Ici, if I had a child with a chronic illness needing frequent pickups, I would arrange my working life differently - move near family support, pay a nanny, go part time etc.

That's very different to a once or twice a year incident.

mindthegap - I agree!

School is compulsory, Ici, and I believe some benefits will be affected if parents don't take available work once children are of school age.

And, Yonic? That doesn't mean that school has the responsibility of looking after ill children purely because their parents are employed by people who are prepared to break the law. And if you get sacked because you leave work to collect your sick child, your entitlement to benefits certainly won't be affected.

If a hospital doesn't have the capacity to ensure the legal minimum of staff are available then it is the hospital's responsibility, not the individual staff member's. After all, if they only have two staff members on and one of those becomes ill, they are going to have to sort something out, aren't they?

And if it really is the case that a staff member can't leave because it would put patients' lives at risk, what are they going to do if they get the call to say their own child is dangerously ill or has had a serious accident? What do they do if they get the call that the child minder hasn't turned up to collect their child and the school is about to close? The point is, if you take a job where you might be placed in that situation, you absolutely have to have a back-up arrangement in place. And if you haven't got that back-up, then you shouldn't take that job.

Ici, I was contrasting compulsory school with doing your neighbour a favour