To tell parents not to send their sick kids to activities?

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We had a Brownies and Rainbows event (so all volunteer-run) and a kid was dropped off by her mum, looking tearful. Asked if she was ok, mum said yes but a bit tired. 10 minutes later lid throws up all over hall and asks to go home.

We rang her mum, no answer. Turns out she's been sent home from school already that day with a sickness bug.

Finally tracked her mum and dad down to the pub, and they huffily collected her.

Apparently they didn't know that children who aren't well enough for school aren't well enough for Rainbows/Brownies and were quite put out to be told. Dad said there was no need for us to keep ringing as they would have come when they'd finished their drinks!

I don't think it matters whether the school follow the rule for 2 reasons.

1. It's crappy parenting. Poor kid just wanted to be home.
2. You can make your own policies.

I'd absolutely refuse to volunteer again unless a policy is put in place to shake clear that the 48 hour rule applies to the club and that the club has discretion to ban anyone from attending in future of they are found to be breaking the rule or bringing unwell children to the club.

Might make people think twice.

Sorry. I think i phrased my title wrong - I wasn't trying to tell you. It was that the dad was angry that I'd told him! It should probably have read "to have told parents".

I've always had the rule - not well enough for school, not well enough for activities. Surely that's common sense.

I found out after dd had a sickness bug though that the kids school has switched to a 24 hr rule after sickness, 48 only of its d and v. I kept her off for the full 48 tbh, for her sake and for the other kids.

Her place should be withdrawn, irresponsible parents who make themselves uncontactable! Your volunteers, not childcare.

I can absolutely see the reasoning for excluding parents when this happens, but I do feel sorry for their children, who don't choose to come along sick.

That’s horrendous. The poor kid for one thing! And also poor volunteers and other kids who may now catch it.

Some people are so selfish! Imagine forcing sick and fearful kid to an activity so you could go for a drink.

I do think there are a small subset of parents who use Scouts/ Guides as very cheap babysitting rather than because their child actually wants to do it.

The 48 hour rule is a bit nuts tho. Ive had countless times where a child has been sick once at 7pm, had a good nights sleep and been absolutely fine the following morning. I understand keeping them off that day, but assuming you've washed everything thoroughly, does that second day of a bored, perfectly well child at home really made a huge difference to the spread? I'm not convinced.

I do think there are a small subset of parents who use Scouts/ Guides as very cheap babysitting rather than because their child actually wants to do it.

Agreed, i don't even think its small. Cubs and brownies are cheap and these days mostly run by parents in rotation, its really like a baby sitting circle.

Punishing the child for the actions of the parents? I assume Brownies has better morals than Kim Jung Un.

Ours has very few parent volunteers (this is another frustration). It's almost all women in their 60s and 70s who have been part of Girl Guiding for 50 years or more.

I am a parent volunteer and we tried to recruit more parents last year to help
for an hour a week on rotation, but had no uptake. We have had to cancel some events as we couldn't get the numbers of adults, despite requests.

I have no idea what will happen when our long-standing volunteers retire.

The difficulty now is most households have two parents working full time. It's hard to manage volunteering on top of that. I do manage to volunteer but it takes a huge amount of organisation (and a supportive spouse and employer) for it to work.

The guide leaders when I was young tended to be SAHMs and the scout leaders tended to have a wife who was a SAHM.

The problem with sending sick kids to school, is that the bug then goes around the staff. I eventually left school after three bouts of pneumonia in one year. I’ve never had so much as a cold since I left two years ago. I did have norovirus, but I caught that from my grandson who caught it at a baby group.

The parents will have to pay babysitters to go to the pub instead.

I won't be doing it again any time soon ever thanks mostly to the parents I had to deal with.

DH and I both work full time and it's a slog. We had our usual Rainbows meeting this week and this was an extra event bringing together girls from the wider area, so it's been two nights this week.

Common sense should prevail but when you have schools setting up sofas and iPads in the welfare room rather than send sick kids home it does set a culture of presenteeism which will spill over into activities as well as school.. Staying home when ill is now seen as a sign of weakness and laziness rather than necessary to get well and protect others. I'm currently on disciplinary at work for a combination of one of my DC being ill (enough to be taken to A and E in an ambulance not just a sniffle) and then later me being genuinely too ill to drive in and work (fever, sick etc). We need to bring back the days of bugs meaning a couple of duvet days with look and read and Heinz tomato soup!

As a way to improve overall attendance within a school it's just so incredibly shortsighted, and I question the common sense of any head teacher who brings in a policy like this. I know Ofsted is hot on attendance, but asking a child who was up vomiting <12 hours earlier to come in is just asking for more children to catch it, and therefore you'll have more sick days in total than if you just left the poor child alone.

Punishing the child for the actions of the parents? I assume Brownies has better morals than Kim Jung Un.

That poster was talking about not allowing the child to come if the parents made themselves uncontactable - I think that's a perfectly reasonable condition to have for an activity. Parents need to be contactable if there is an emergency - if they can't commit to that, or if something happens and it turns out they aren't contactable, then the volunteers shouldn't be in that position. This was "just" a sickness bug but what if there was a really serious medical incident.

Selfish parents to inflict sick child on others and neglectful for not looking after their poorly child.

my kids are at secondary and doesn’t have the 48hr rule. In fact one kid vomited in class and they just cleaned it up and the child remained in class…!

To be fair, if the kid was 5, was their only kid and the first time it had happened, perhaps they simply weren't aware of the school's policy. My son had one single bout of diarrhea last week early in the morning and then perked up for the rest of the day and was fine. We sent him in the next day simply because we didn't know about the 48hr rule until the school said about it and sent him back. I felt like a bit of a fool but then again it hadn't affected us to that point.

Oh yes absolutely. I don’t agree with the policy at all but most of the schools in our area are the same trust so have the same policy.

I think some people are plain inconsiderate, and are happy to spread their filth. although these parents sounds worse and wanted to be down the pub instead of looking after their sick child.

I think this is going to be a tough situation to resolve. I volunteered with brownies 20 years ago and the majority of the other leaders were retired, SAHM’s or maybe worked part time and volunteered to help out when their kids were members, and stayed on as they enjoyed it and had the time to do so. Now so many mums are having to work FT, long hours, alongside the pressure of so many clubs, homework etc it’s hard to see where the next generation of parent - volunteers will come from. I would love to do something like it again but don’t have the capacity to commit to weekly meetings as well as all the prep work.

I do the meetings but I can't imagine having time to do all the admin too.