Aibu to think headmistress is living in la la land?

[Maxandrubyrubyandmax]

Get out of a 30 min meeting at work 5missed calls on mobile and my secretary comes rushing over at same time land line calls. Headmistress from ds school. DS has run into post and banged his nose. Can I get there immediately. Apparently DS is fine but we have to pick him up. Explain I will be about 45 min as need to pack up and get train and walk to school. DH about an hour away. Quizzed about couldn't a grandparent pick up
DS (no the nearest is 2 hours away). Didn't we have friends? Yes but it's not 1955 so they all work? Other relatives? No they live miles away and yes they work. Set off to school. Head mistress rings DH goes through same questions. As no one has moved house in last 5min gets same answer. Get to school. DS sat chatting to school secretary happy as you like. Head mistress goes through same questions nope still no one hAs moved or given up job in last 45 min. But there must be someone says the head. Well no actually there isn't. But she wants someone who can be at school in 5 min. Start to get pissed off. No one I tell her. She then shakes her head and says I guess that's how it is these days then. Aibu to be pissed off and felt judged about the fact I have moved away from the family home, got a job and don't just drop off child and sit at home all day? If it had been urgent I would have jumped in a taxi

If it wasn't just come and collect from school, as in OPs child is in an ambulance I am sure her secretary would of interrupted the meeting.

I work, and travel a lot, up to 70 miles some days. OH works 30 miles away. We drive, but when I didn't it would be an hour to pick LO up (from 6 months old he went to nursery) in a real emergency (like ambulance situation) I would be prepared to get a taxi.

I would recommend any non drivers who work far away to have an emergency fund for taxis in case of an emergency.

I don't see anything wrong with a school aged child sitting in an office/quite area for an hour until parents can collect.

HT is a silly moo, considered opinion of an exHT!

Do they have to make themselves available at lunchtime?

All TAs and a lot of teachers in our school have first aid training. It just means that whoever is closest or free deals with it. I guess in a big emergency it means there are a lot of people who can club together and give each other support. In reality in means we are all fine applying a wipe and a plaster. I wouldn't feel prepared for the day-to-day job without any first aid training at all.

Actually...a bump to the nose is a head injury?
My youngest fell over at school a few months ago and injured his nose. Turned out it was broken. His eyes were rolling and the school were worried about concussion. The leaflet we got at hospital gave advice on what to do after a head injury.
Parents need to realise that school staff are doing the best for their children. If school didn't contact parents immediately, parents would be quick to complain. No win situation!
In my opinion, the head and staff were doing what they thought best.

Ithaka It wouldn't surprise me if most schools provide first aid on a purely volunteer basis but it's hardly then a surprise if people find out what a thankless pain it is, and decide to either not volunteer or to let their first aid certificate lapse. But it does explain why schools in general are so poorly equipped to deal with anything beyond extremely basic instances. For that reason, and the reasons I gave before about how serious the responsibility actually is, it should be rewarded somehow.

Staff in schools are given a £50 a year payment to take on a responsibility for First Aid. They can end up treating someone having a serious epileptic fit, an allergic reaction , a heart attack, a serious sporting injury, or a serious fall. If it has a bad outcome they can end up in a Health and Safety Executive investigation if a complaint is made.
It is a huge responsibility.

paris have you read the OP? She's not complaining that she was contacted. She's complaining that the head expected her to be able to pick up her DS immediately and was disapproving of the fact she was working 45 min away.

I've never heard of this payment in any of the schools I have worked in, Lulu.

Watery, have you ever actually lived in the real world? In the office environment and probably many other professions )I'm guessing ) people don't get paid to have first aid training, be fire marshalls and often have meetings over lunch breaks, people coming up to you asking questions when you're eating your lunch etc. I know many a teacher who would help a child over lunch break. Quite frankly you are coming over as someone very out of touch, you didn't see the pastoral care of your charges as your business and a complete jobsworth! I suspect most here breathed a sigh of relief to find out you are no longer in the profession.

Lulu £50 a year to possibly end up dealing with a life-altering/ending incident, then possibly face an awful outcome from it, and then possibly find yourself stood in front of a panel from a H&S Executive Investigation??? I wouldn't even consider doing that for £500 extra per year.

I know many a teacher who would help a child over lunch break.

And one of those would be me, every single day. Which is why I didn't want to sit in the staffroom on call. I preferred to be working with the children who needed extra support.

Minipie, obviously I've read it but the Head was clearly worried that it was still a head injury, even though her child seemed fine. I'm pretty sure that she wouldn't have asked that he was picked up immediately if she wasn't concerned. Anyway, most schools ask for emergency contacts these days and would have contacted them had they not been able to get hold of a parent. All I'm saying is that there must have been a reason for them wanting him collected asap.

Forthe I know it's a serious responsibility, I'm trained in first aid myself and have unsuccessfully given CPR. As a parent, I would far rather there were first aid trained staff available in schools than none at all.

It's obviously lovely if parents can get to school within 10 minutes if a child is poorly, but it's extremely unrealistic.

The DWP, for example, would expect an unemployed single parent to take any job they were offered within a 90 minute commute.

These systems need to be joined up in order to work. You can't have a 'you must commute for 90 minutes' on one hand, and a 'you must pick up your child within 20 minutes' on the other! And the people who make decisions about the school system should be at least minimally informed about the demographics of the populations they serve - in which both parents largely now work.

Lulu £50 a year to possibly end up dealing with a life-altering/ending incident, then possibly face an awful outcome from it, and then possibly find yourself stood in front of a panel from a H&S Executive Investigation??? I wouldn't even consider doing that for £500 extra per year.

As has been pointed out, in most work environments people take on the first aider role for £0 per year. Just because they like volunteering, they have a sense of duty, they are nice. All the usual volunteer motivations. I think people are making it out to be far more than it is - anything serious would not be dealt with by a first aider.

I second what the OP says, I had 3 people queuing at my desk today asking me to make desicions, at 8:45am, none of us get paid until 9am.

Head is totally out of touch with reality and is bang out of order. I've been through similar situations when my son was at nursery, all for minor things. Not all working parents are lucky enough to work close to school or have a local support network for emergency pick ups. She sounds ridiculous for a head.

Nicknacky: As a parent, I would far rather there were first aid trained staff available in schools than none at all.

Ditto on the CPR . Anyway, I agree entirely. In fact, I don't really think there's anything we disagree on here other than how to make those trained first aiders happen, and like a PP said, the more the better. My point is, if there is extremely limited motivation to become a first aider, and plenty of things to put you off (lost lunch breaks, possible bad outcomes, potential hearings, etc.), you can see why teachers would be in no rush to volunteer. My argument will always be that the best solution is a nurse, but failing that, at the very least, provide staff with a sensible motivation - it might not be monetary but my god give them something, free lunches, pool passes, whatever it takes - to want to take on such a potential degree of responsibility. That way more are likely to get trained up, thus the burden is shared, it's less onerous, more experience, etc. etc. etc..

Forthe the only thing I disagree with is I think it should be mandatory training. Not just for the kids benefit but staff can become ill while on sight. One of the office staff in my secondary school had an asthma attack and dies while at work. I think first aid training should be more available and encouraged, not even for those in the work place.

Ithaka: anything serious would not be dealt with by a first aider.

Bluntly, you don't always get to make that call. Serious accidents and sudden illnesses do happen, and if you're the first aider on site, you end up being the person in charge of that incident till the ambulance arrives, whether that takes ten minutes or two hours. With luck most people will never deal with more than a broken wrist, but should something horrible unfold, you can't suddenly decide, "Sorry, I don't deal with serious stuff. Best of luck to all you totally untrained people dealing with that suspected heart attack/severe concussion/whatever."

paris I would suspect the reason is because it was inconvenient for the school to have a child out of a lesson needing to be watched. Even the teachers on this thread who are backing up the HT think that's the reason. Not that the HT was desperately worried about the child - if she was then why suggest the child be handed over to a friend rather than his parents? That says she just wanted him off her hands.

She is unreasonable to an extent. However, just to add some of us who are SAHM don't sit at home doing nothing. I have one child and chose not to work partly because I'm fortunate to not have to and mostly to be around for my child (not implying that other parents don't or aren't if they work)
My DH parents live 3 hours away and are quite old. We don't have any relatives in our city and my parents and family live overseas.
I don't have friends who are available and live close by to help in such a situation. Everyone's lives are different and most people don't rely on others because sometimes we can't or don't have that option. I think she might've been worried that there could've been a more serious injury following his accident despite your child being happy or well for that time and perhaps would feel better that he/she was in your care as so as possible in case anything worse developed but that said she is quite narrow minded to assume that everyone has someone they can turn to at the drop of a hat.

Nicknacky the only thing I disagree with is I think it should be mandatory training.

It might surprise you but I don't even disagree with this. I would have it as part of every teacher's contract, actually, because I don't think you can have too many people with first aid training in the building. (I would sill have the nurse though. Never giving up on the trained nurse/counselor thing. ) But I would also make it clear that x% of their salary was a reward directly for this responsibility and would probably here goes my god-complex for changing the world again link higher levels of training with payraises, promotion, or other perks.

It probably remains a very good thing that I am a powerless nobody. God knows what mischief I would be responsible for if I could wave a magic wand and make half this stuff happen.

If you work in Care first aid training is mandatory, no extra ££ and in many places for minimum wage.