To think a school can’t stop a parent from seeing their child

[MargoLovebutter]

Or is this a thing now?

My friend seems to think that a school has some jurisdiction or power to prevent a pupil from seeing a parent.

I think this is rubbish and think that if a school has safe guarding concerns about a pupil they have to report it to the local authority or the police but that a school can’t arbitrarily decide what parent sees what child.

Who is right here?

What I know about OP's original question is that PP's are right. Unless school have copies of court ordered supervised schedule on a court order or a no contact order that they copy onto their files, they cannot stop parent with PR taking child.
Though can't imagine teachers would argue with a parent but instead ring police.

Although a child refusing to go with unexpected NRP parent that turned up befire Res parent, if child went back into building or to teacher upset, could result in school ringing Res parent.

I'm pretty sure schools can't "take instructions to withhold child from any PR parent" on verbal say so of CSD social worker or Res parent. They can act on welfare concern if any parent turns up appearing aggressive or under influence.
Worth keeping school in calm factual loop as they need to support child too. But schools generally wouldn't be happy with parent turning up during normal school day anyway, unexpected, to remove them from class without good reason (health appmt etc). .

HarryLovesDraco is spot on with above post too.

So anyone who says their child's school is stopping them from seeing their child, either has a court order preventing it, turned up aggressive/ or did something to cause a welfare concern, or child refuses to go with them or is telling you a 'poor me story' with some missing bits. Schools just don't have that legal right to refuse any parent to collect without genuine legal grounds. Nor should they.

Harry

When I’m in the situation under which I have previously asked and had it work I’m going to carry on doing so, and I’m quite comfortable with that.

I would be more than happy to defend my position on the matter in a court room and take any sanction if one occurred handed out to me,

And so far over many years taking a kid out of one door with one or holder whilst the other is distracted hasn’t even caused an eyebrow to be raised.

again, collecting a child from school is in no way the same thing as being banned from seeing a child.
People seem to have 2 things confused here....

It is the most obvious possibility with the other possibility I gave as well so fairly reasonable to converse about.

@NotUmbongoUnchained there is a third option with PR and that's to apply for them for your now DH. We're thinking of doing this for my DH also step dad to my eldest two DC. I'm going for the angle its financial protection for the DC if DH dies as they'd be entitled to pension etc.

Its not withdrawing from your X its adding an extra name.

It appears to roughly mean that the DC have three parents so in an emergency your DH could manage the DC. My big fear has been if something happened to me XH would delight in seizing and blowing all assets in the DC's names then get bored of the DC (very quickly) and abandon them. DH who's been Dad for a decade would be powerless.

DS' school banned his father from the school grounds and wrote me a letter of support while I was going through court to stop contact, they also called the police a number of times to have DS' father removed from the school grounds. He told everybody the headteacher was preventing him seeing DS. I suppose its easier than admitting he was a danger to DS. Could it be something similar?

SparklyUnicornPoo, I suspect it is something like that and my friend is not getting the full story.

Someone at my children’s school was in the process of getting a court order to prevent her abusive ex from accessing the kids. While he had PR they couldn’t do anything to prevent him taking them.
What they did do was ring her (she was local) then the office ladies would dither like mad. They would go off and come back, and you would get “oh she’s in pe, have you tried the hall?” And spend ten minutes getting the kids. Mum would turn up and give him a short shrift, and refuse him herself.

I know DS' head said if she could ban DS' father from seeing him she would have done from day one and saved everybody months of trouble. She bent over backwards to help us and had there been any way the school could do that she would have found it.

A schoolbcan ban a parent from the school but appart from immediate safeguarding or following court orders not much else.
Bit of a red flag to your friend.

Agree that in the absence of court order or police involvement, the only thing the school can do is delay handover until the resident parent shows up.

People can be banned by school, if their presence in school grounds is threatening, violent or disruptive.

A school can delay contact with an estranged parent whilst they contact the resident parent if they believe it is in the best interest of the child. A school will also phone the police and advise them they believe the best course if action is for a child to stay with the resident parent or nominated carer. There doesn't have to be social services involvement or court orders. Most schools are quite sensible in regards to this kind of issue

LolaLouise, that makes it sound as though the school does have power to prevent access in some way. If the school phones the police and says the child should stay with a particular parent- who enforces that, if there is no court order?

If a parent has PR&Rs the school can do nothing when said parent turns up to collect said child

If there is a court order they can refuse

If they feel the child is at immediate risk they can call SW/police and let them take over

A school can only release a child to a known adult. So when we each child starts at a school the parent/guardian with parental responsibility has to fill out various forms. On these forms is a section for main contact details, and emergency contact details. Also at primary they have a form to list people who pick up the child. If another person, not named on the form or pre-arranged with the school tries to collect a child they will be refused. However, the exception to the rule is unless an official order is in place, by social services or the police, then anybody with parental responsibility can collect the child, even if the other person with parental responsibility has requested they don’t iyswim.

Yes the school can refuse to let a parent see a child.
My DCs 'dad' was under investigation for sexual offences against a child and my DDs were at two different schools. One said if he turned up he wouldnt get past reception and police would be called to remove him. The other said well hes on the birth certificate so if he turns up we will let him see them/take them. A few police visits to the headteacher later where she was repeatedly warned he was a static risk to all children not just mine and that if she allowed him on the premises then she could be liable for not keeping kids safe should anything happen as he was a known risk and she FINALLY agreed that if he turned up she would ring the police to get him removed.
He has since been convicted, imprisoned and I have a residence order but still struggling to remove PR.

No, they can't.

I had to take legal advice on this & consult with a CP Agency when I ran kids drama classes.

I was told that I had no right to prevent the father from turning up & taking his daughter’s as he had parental responsibility. The only thing I could do was say that if he disrupted classes by turning up in the middle the girls could not attend or if he appeared drunk, abusive etc I could ban him from the premises (the latter didn’t apply)

Mum removed the girls from my classes because she felt I couldn’t guarantee their safety (eg I wasn’t prepared to refuse the father access)

I've had a kid (year 7) beg me to let him hide in my book cupboard - my lesson was end of the day - because his dad was in the car park waiting for him, & had sent a string of texts saying he was going to 'kick the shit out of you, you little fucker'.

I rang the office from my classroom (could see Dad pacing about from my window).

Deputy Head came up & waited with me & the boy in the classroom until Dad had been removed by the police. Scary.

Dad was subsequently banned from the premises.

DC's primary school told me that if a parent has Parental Responsibility, unless there is a court order, there is nothing they can do to stop either parent from taking the child from school.

In reality, when XH collected DC from after school club, they telephoned me to ensure that it was ok and that I knew about it (I did and had given him the password).

I think it depends on the circumstances to be honest if a parent turned up in an agressive manner dragging kid around etc they have a right to refuse to allow them to leave. Most schools also have a list of safe adults a kid can go with. If they allowed a child to go with anyone even a parent who was deemed unsafe they are fully liable.

Schools can't decide, but they can phone the police.

It's not restricted to schools either. The father of a girl in my DD's dance class turned up drunk and aggressive (punching the walls, threatening to hurt the teacher) so the instructor kept the girl in the classroom and phoned the police.

If a NRP who the child hadn't seen since he/she was a baby turned up, and the child didn't want to go with them, I imagine that the school would phone the police then as well. My stepdaughter's mother can only have supervised contact, and her school have seen the court order and would phone the police if she tried to collect her.