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?

The problem caused by this situation will be resolved in Scotland in August 2016. By then the SNP government intend to have state appointed guardians (named contact) for all children in Scotland. Scottish parents could just pop their name down as the emergency contact! One issue could be the state appointed guardian is possibly going to be the head teacher though!

Peruvian, isn't it reasonably obvious that your emergency contact arrangements are inadequate if your job is such that you may be unable to collect your child for 5 hours and you are relying on people who won't collect your child if he is ill?

Where on earth do you get the idea that "the majority of parents" would do this?

Why on earth is it unreasonable to expect two parents working in the health service to make arrangements which mean that they do not deliberately neglect their ill child? It's not rocket science to say that if your jobs have that consequence, at least one of you needs to look for another job. And please don't go claiming that alternative jobs are hard to find. Nothing justifies deliberate neglect.

Coincidentally DD was talking about a similar issue yesterday. Her Secondary school has an MI room for sick pupils. If a pupil is ill they are sent there to be assessed. DD was there to get a painkiller and there was a boy there who was very sick with D&V but his parents, both healthcare workers couldn't collect him.

WRT children who are imunosupressed, my sons primary has this week sent home a letter stating colds, coughs, sore throats and headaches unless accompanied by a raised temperature are all not reasons to stay off school. So I do kind of agree with Peruvian that if those are all a serious threat then no, maybe school isn't the best option for an imunosupressed child.

Where on earth do you get the idea that "the majority of parents" would do this?

From this thread! All those people saying they've got an arrangement with their friends mum, their neighbour, or a network of single mums.

When push comes to shove, how many of those emergency contacts would actually collect a child described by the school as very ill, feverish and shivering?

If the parents in the OP are expected to accommodate their emergency contacts change of heart, then so should all the parents on this thread who rely on similar arrangements.

After years as a WOHP, I have realised the following:

• It is near impossible to gauge whether a child is unwell (unless VERY obviously sick) at 7.30 in the morning.
• If I kept my DCs off school every time they felt ill (cold, headache etc) they would be off school for probably 20% of time.

-After many occasions where DCs were under the weather and went to nursery, despite me telling nursery to phone me at any time to pick up, 99% of time DCs were perfectly fine and there was absolutely NO need for me to pick them up.

Its not great that in the situation you suggest, the parents weren't able to collect, but them taking him to school in the first place was not neglectful IMO.

OTT exclamations on this thread along the lines of 'DCs sent in with D&V!!!' presume that the parents knew DCs had or would have D&V prior to sending DCs to school. It is a fairly regular event for someone in my DCs classes to be sick in school - never occurs to me to blame this on parents sending in ill kids, but rather that kids have become sick whilst at school.

^ what Bee said^

A child who is immunocompromised should not have to stay off school just do some feckless individual who puts their employer before their child can leave their unwell child at school to spread his germs.
An immunocompromised child will be (where possible) vaccinated against all common illnesses in order that he can attend school and receive the education he is entitled to whilst minimising the risk of picking up illnesses, but that doesn't mean that he should be put at further unnecessary risk by selfish parents who can't be arsed to keep their unwell child at home for a day or two.
I can't believe that somebody would have the audacity to suggest that parents who have immunocompromised children should home educate (and no doubt give up their careers to do so) so that another parent doesn't have to miss a couple of days work to look after their own sick child.
I have really heard it all now!

I know that if push really came to shove my friend would get my son because she has done it. I was away from home and my husband couldn't get home immediately for the kids. My friend picked my son up and stuck him on the sofa until dad got there.

If you know that there are times that you can no way get home for your kid because you are going to be out of the country then you need back up childcare such as a nanny in case your friends don't come through. My friend's husband is in the military so she is on her own with the kids for months at a time. She works and can't easily leave so she pays an older lady to help out.

I agree that sometimes it is near impossible to tell if a kid is sick early in the morning. Sometimes we keep a kid home and take them in late if they end up being fine after all.

When DSs were small and sick during school time we had no TV, no iPods or anything else. Long naps and confined to bed with blinds closed. If they were sick they welcomed the quiet and rest, if they weren't they got bored easily and didn't claim sickness when it wasn't needed the next time.

Sometimes my sons would call from school saying they didn't feel good. I would ask them if it was a 'need time to sit down and take a painkiller not good' or 'needs to come home and go to bed not good'. Sometimes they just needed some parental sympathy and said they could go back to class so I'd talk to the school and we'd make a plan.

both healthcare workers couldn't collect him.

Of course they could, they chose not to. If one of them had passed out on the job they would have been sent home.

This is beginning to remind me about something that happened to a colleague in her first year of teaching. (long before mobile phones)

Child not collected at the gate, so taken back to the classroom after 10 minutes. Parents called after half an hour. No response from mother, father (at work) says mother on her way. Half an hour passes all staff except head gone home, cleaners finished their work.

Father phoned again and is furious at the interruption, says wife is on her way from a city 40 miles away. She was delayed.

HT says he needs to collect child now, he refuses. HT says child has to be collected in the next half hour or there will be "consequences".

Father arrives and threatens to deck HT. He feels HT should have been happy to wait with his DC because "It's his job."

The arrogance of that reminds me of some posters on here.

I can't believe that somebody would have the audacity to suggest that parents who have immunocompromised children should home educate (and no doubt give up their careers to do so) so that another parent doesn't have to miss a couple of days work to look after their own sick child.

Well, no one did have the audacity to say that.

My point is that if a child is so at risk that a childhood infection could kill them (as was described upthread) then a classroom, with or without overtly sick children, is a very risky place for them.

My point is that if a child is so at risk that a childhood infection could kill them (as was described upthread) then a classroom, with or without overtly sick children, is a very risky place for them.

The whole planet, every nook and cranny, is a risky place for them but they still have to be able to have a life without selfish parents making things riskier by not keeping sick children at home.
As tiggytape said, we are not talking about children with common colds! we are talking about children who are ill to the point of shivering and needing to lay down crying. Sending a child to school with a cold or minor sniffle is fine. Most immuncrompromised children do pick up common colds regularly and it might make them much more ill than it would for a healthy person but the likelihood is that they will recover just fine (if they immune system is so compromised that a common cold would likely kill them then they would probably be in an isolation ward until their immune system improves). But an illness that makes a health child have a fever, be shivering and crying and needing to lay down is much more serious and could cause very serious problems for an immunocompromised child.
Only a fool can not see the difference.

Well, no one did have the audacity to say that.

Well you did suggest that they should home educate and I'm not sure how any parent could do that and not give up work. Maybe parents of immunocompromised children have some magical time extension power that parents of other children don't possess.

"Hopefully HTs will begin to deregister children whose parents are irresponsible."

This will never happen because school is compulsory.

Who knows if the parents in the OP have been trying for years to get a transfer to a more local hospital? Maybe, maybe not.

My solution would be a study on the economics of reinstating sick bays with properly trained nurses. I'd be happy if this was even a private service I had to subscribe for or pay if I ever used. It seems to me that the economics for the country of these being on standby in school for the use of all pupils vs each parent paying for standby provision separately might add up. It wouldn't remove the need for parents to come as quickly as possible but it would mean teaching or other time would not be lost.

However, it might not prove economic because the majority of children waiting to be picked up probably aren't as ill as the child in the OP, they are sitting in the school office with a headache for a quiet half hour and parents are only called if they don't start to feel a little brighter, say.

we are not talking about children with common colds! we are talking about children who are ill to the point of shivering and needing to lay down crying

But they are no more of a risk (and may be less so) than DCs who develop those symptoms a few hours after school finishes.

An apparently healthy child who becomes unwell after school, or at the weekend, was contagious while at school. If that type of illness could kill a classmate, then whether parents of overtly ill children send their DCs to school or not is irrelevant - the child has still been exposed.

But they are no more of a risk (and may be less so) than DCs who develop those symptoms a few hours after school finishes.

If you can't see the diference between exposing an immunocrompromised child unknowingly due to symptoms appearing afterwards and deliberately returning an ill child to school the next day and leaving them there all day then you must be really thick!

If you can't see the diference between exposing an immunocrompromised child unknowingly due to symptoms appearing afterwards and deliberately returning an ill child to school the next day and leaving them there all day then you must be really thick!

Hardly unknowingly, anyone who doesn't know that a class of 30 children will be crawling with infection that could kill a vulnerable child must be "really thick".

I would like to live on a planet where parents put the health of their children first and are not selfish enough to jeopardise the health of other children. I can't understand any other attitude.

Arguably parents are putting their child first if they keep their jobs and therefore can provide for their child though. It didn't sound from the OP as if the child needed urgent medical attention and therefore it is an exaggeration to say the parents were jeopardising their health by not picking them up straightaway. Do you think it would necessarily be better for the child to be picked up from school straightaway but then have to suffer the consequences of their parents loosing their job e.g. being evicted from their home etc.

"My solution would be a study on the economics of reinstating sick bays with properly trained nurses."

Yeah right, like that's going to happen.

It is a parent's job, not the school's, to organise appropriate and prompt care for their child if they are sick.

"they are sitting in the school office with a headache for a quiet half hour" We had 34 children complaining of various ailments yesterday alone (large school). No epidemic or anything, just run-of-the-mill gripes. And an awful lot of children nowadays are very vocal about their ailments and expect something done about it by the school staff. Many would not "sit quietly in the office" while the secretaries get on with their work. They'd be crying, or asking for drinks, or wanting an icepack and so on.

I think a lot of parents, who want their child nursed when they're ill are only thinking about the logistics of one, not the fact that the school has hundreds of others to deal with too.

It is very difficult for working parents. Kids get sick, it is a hard decision to make. Waking a child who claims to be sick, I have always tried to base my decision that if I was not working would I keep DC at home. If I answer yes, then I take the day off. Luckily I work in senior management and will not get in trouble. The answer is not always yes, and I have given them calpol and sent to school. As a pp said, if I kept mine at home every time they said they were sick they would be off 20% of the time.

ExDh works much closer to the school than I do, so he does the pick ups if we get a call from school. On the few occasions we have had to pick up from school I have rarely found a sick child though. I do think schools are overly keen to call you to pick up. Once we got a call from primary school saying my DS1 was complaining of tummy ache, so could we pick him up, it was just before lunch. ExDH went to get him, took him home, fed him, he was fine. He had been hungry!

DS1 had swine flu, years ago, I told the school and kept him off for two weeks. DM came to stay. A couple of months later I got a letter from school complaining about his attendance and said they wanted a chat. We can not win!

So pass that problem straight on to the school?
Anything else we can offload and make their problem?