Is this a valid reason to take DD's out of school for the rest of this week (Scotland)?

[iveburntthetoast]

I will try to keep this brief....
FIL has a lot of health problems, especially with his heart (he is 70). Over the weekend, he started to struggle to move around, very breathless, dizzy. Today MIL called the doctor, who said he is very seriously ill and needs to be in hospital urgently for treatment. FIL became aggressive and refused to go so they performed an assessment under the MH Act. He has been sectioned, and the last thing we heard, the police were at the house to take him away.

They live 300 miles away in the middle of countryside, miles from the nearest town. Only FIL can drive, MIL is very frail herself and needs help, and BIL lives with them who has learning difficulties. DH really needs to be down there to look after them all. I dread to think how upset MIL is at seeing all this--FIL was apparently very aggressive towards her. In addition to neeeding treatment, the doctor said he was too aggressive to allow him to stay at home. (This is not normal behaviour for FIL)

I work full-time. DH is a SAHD so we don't have any out-of-school childcare and no friends who could help out. I can't take time off work and I would also struggle to take care of the DD's on my own (I'm disabled.)

The only thing we can think of doing is to take the DD's out of school and DH will take them to stay with my parents for the rest of the week. (My parents only live 10 miles away from PIL). We wouldn't keep them out of school for any longer than the next 4 days.

Is this a reasonable situation to take DC's out of school? We're in Scotland so I think things are a bit different legally than in England. I just can't see any other way around this.

How old are the DC? How close are they to their grandad and how much do they know about what's happening?

If they're close, then being in school will be a good diversion for them from what's going on and enable them to just get on with normal things. If you take them out and DH takes them with him then they're even closer to what's going on Iyswim.

I was recently in hospital, on life support, and it was touch and go for a while as to whether I would survive. My DS had two days off school, the day after I was taken in because it had been such a late night with such a lot of uncertainty, and the day after which was just before the weekend. But both the school and my eXH felt that it would be far better for DS to be back in school the next week so that he could not be dwelling on what was going on at the hospital and could just do normal things back with his mates etc. So he went back to school on the Monday and my mum and eXH managed it between them. Had the situation been reversed I would have made the same decision.

They won't legally be able to give you permission but they can't stop you or fine you so I wouldn't worry about it. But don't ask them as they'll say no- inform them it is happening and the reasons behind it so they are aware.

Just thought I'd updateDH left this morning with DDs. We hadn't realised that the school is closed Thurs/Fri for inset days so they'll only miss 2 days. We may have ended up at the school gates on Thursday morning--