Parents in East Sussex are being told to ‘Get a Grip’ via leaflet if their child is off sick for more than 3 days a term

[DingleBerries]

Will you sign the petition to stop this?

What absolutely arseholes. My friends son was admitted to hospital last week, he was in the high dependency unit and there were talks about intubating him.

This week she gets this in her DC’s book bag. Her nerves already in tatters she is told by East Sussex council to ‘Get a grip’, that other parents manage to get their kids to school and questions her ability.

Absolutely out of order, patronising, condescending and insulting.

Please sign the petition if you agree.

www.change.org/p/east-sussex-county-council-east-sussex-county-council-withdraw-the-get-a-grip-campaign-and-make-a-public-apology/w

I agree with deck. The parents who already don't care won't start giving a shit and it'll wind up everyone else.

I know a few parents who don't even read school letters, they aren't going to notice these campaigns.

That's the thing - you're targeting a very specific set of people. So you don't go printing tons and sending it out to everyone.

They’re called a “kirby” where I’m from. That leaflet cover would confuse most people here.

Misses point.

most primary age children are pretty resilient and perk up pretty quickly ime.
Obviously the title could have been better - wonder how many meetings they had to come up with that
and a fair amount of parents will just go about their normal business anyway.

Both my DSs had a copy of this leaflet in their book bags, both have 100% attendance (so far).

Not offended by it, but it's very poorly thought out. No good reasons in big bold letters, immediately followed by exceptions. Writing the exceptions as an exhaustive list when they're clearly not.

I hate seeing things like this where money has obviously been spent on it but the actual content is simply not up to scratch.

Maybe there are some local dialect differences at play, but I'm from T'up North and I find the phase "get a grip" really patronising. I'm not one to be offended easily, but I would be really offended by this whether my kid had been in hospital or not. The phrase itself is horrible and has no place on a leaflet from school

Well if attendance is noticeable poor in the area the LA have to have some response.
Would you think it more appropriate if only the specific families involved got leaflets ? Because I know how that would go - targeting the vulnerable, racism, anything discriminatory.

It’s sad your friends son was ill but this doesn’t mean that it was either a personal criticism or of no value.

How is sending a leaflet telling the parents to get a grip not a personal criticism? And what value might said leaflet offer in that scenario?

what a horrible (and badly written) leaflet. also a pointless waste of money and resources.

I’m professionally offended now, am I?

In all the years I’ve been on MN I’ve nevee posted about things like this.
It isn’t my thing to clutch pearls and come over a little dizzy at stuff that doesn’t quite seem in kilter with the PC or Just So brigade.

But this? This is different. No patent should be told to get a grip. There’s better way of putting things and I certainly would appreciate getting one in my child’s book bag.

I unfortunately have a child with medical issues who has in the past spent a lot of time in hospital.
When I come out of Hospital with him my nerves are shot, my anxiety is high, I’m grateful he’s still alive and I’m very bloody tired.

Do you know what would be really unhelpful to say to me when feeling like that?
“Get a grip”

That would be a really shit thing to tell a parent when they are just about keeping shit together due to a child’s poor health.

What about a parent who’s kids had D&V for a few days and their single Mum has had to take 3 days off work, unpaid to look after them?
You know what she shouldn’t be told once their back? “Get a grip”

Medical appointments
Arrange them outside school hours.

Feeling unwell
If your child has a cold, headache or other minor illness which isn’t contagious, send them to school. Please notify the school if your child has a serious illness where authorised absence may need to be taken.

I think this section is ill thought out. Sure, if it is a dental check up there may be some flexibility of timings but hospital appointments are often just sent out by the hospital with no input from the parent as to whether it is convenient, and if you phone to try and rearrange it may put you further back on the waiting list, which you may have been on for a long while before you got sent the first appointment. It is just not practical to suggest that all appointments can be made for out of school hours.

The second point I think is awful. If your child is feeling unwell, then making them get up and go to school is mean, especially as if they really feel bad the school will send them home again anyway. It also suggests that there is just minor illnesses and then serious illnesses, when in actual fact there is a whole range of illnesses and conditions which fall in between the two.

It also seems to suggest that parents cannot be trusted to assess whether their child is ill enough to stay off school, and so they should send them in anyway and let the school judge. I think that is ridiculous as unless the school is staffed by doctors they are no more qualified to make that call than the parent.

Personally I think it is asking for trouble to say 'Good reasons for missing school- there are none' That is going to be offensive to so many parents of kids with medical conditions it creates a bad feeling to people who are already living with the stress of an unwell child.

The first line says 'with the exception of genuine medical conditions ' so it's not aimed at her - I agree with the message and I bet everyone got one - so not aimed at her

Our school put a fridge magnet in all the school bags at the beginning of the last school year regarding attendence levels and thinking about when a child is actually ill.

I was given an extra one when DDs attendance dropped into the second level. They got it back with a rather shitty note from me regarding DDs absences being to do with ongoing consultant appts which I can't always arrange out of school time due to their needed frequency and that they'd ensured me didn't count towards absence. They've done this to other parents too.

Net result is parents like me are peed off and the ones who take the piss still carry on.

Very shitty and worse for OPs friend though. Wouldn't have taken someone two seconds to realise that perhaps that wasn't a flyer to put in that particular childs bag.

Not2day it’s patronising everywhere.

It’s just that this is the way Mumsnet is now and you’ll always get the

“I like it!” Responses.

It would be different if it was a leaflet in heir child’s book bag after getting out of Hospital though.

I would worry about a parents mental health if their response was “I like this!” After receiving it at that point.

We have two children in our school with serious medical conditions, we are told by the school that if our children have coughs and colds to keep them off. And then we get this leaflet.

I don’t mind the leaflet itself just the contradiction of the school handing it out and saying that our children will fail GCSE’s by not sending them but saying we cant send them in off they are ill.

Medical appointments outside school?

Yeah our local hospital would really work if all the children’s out patients appointments were after 3.30pm.

Most ridiculous things to put.

It's patronising and annoying, and I'm sure the parents who keep kids off for spurious reasons will take no notice. But I guess it ticks a box somewhere.

I ignore and bin anything dickish like this.

Dingle Don't worry about my mental health. It would take more than a generic leaflet.
Obviously the leaflet has to go out to everyone in school otherwise it's horribly offensive to certain groups. It's more about changing the culture where time off is being condoned by parents because everyone else is doing it.
I've worked in places where going off sick was endemic. What can you say without offending someone though? It simoly wasn't true that they they couldn't work as seen when they tighted up absence procedures.

I don't know why people are so obsessed with attendance. I literally didn't go to school 50% of the time for years (school facilitated this by arranging various workshops etc that I could go to). I still got grades in the top 1% and got offers from five medical schools plus a few other things.

How is a cold "not contagious"?

The phrasing of the leaflet also sounds extraordinarily rude.

This is really badly worded and ill thought out. Parents who don't send their children to school won't care - although they will be the ones needing support in many aspects of their lives - and parents whose children have genuine medical conditions will end up with extra stress heaped on them. I've signed the petition, this is a really awful way of addressing the problem.

Thank you for signing.

Gosh do I really need to point out the difference between grown adults being uncommitted to their jobs causing an endemic of sick leave, to parents of children in a primary and junior school who’s children are ill or need to attend hospital appointments?