What would happen if you didn't bring your child to school?

[soreankles]

I often wonder what would happen if I just didn't wake up - I'm a single parent and don't have anyone checking in on me. Would school or nursery do anything?

The end result would be prison

I used to have this kind of worry when DC was little. I have family and friends but no one would think anything of not hearing from me for a week, they’d just assume I’d been busy. If you have a pretty autonomous WFH job or are self employed I can imagine it does make you feel a bit vulnerable.

I work from home

I managed to teach a group of aged 4-6 children how to do this. I was amazed that none of them knew their home address.... Also taught them about checking for danger before approaching and how to put someone in the recovery position. Hopefully they never need to use it. Never too young to learn.

Have you taught your child what to do in an emergency if you are unwell? If not, I recommend you do

Definitely they would call. Secondary called me as DD got mistakenly marked as absent and I hadn’t called in (cos she was in school!). It was within an hour of school starting.

Your employer should check on you if you don't log on. We've had a couple of occasions where a colleague hadn't appeared by 9:30 so HR got in touch to check they were OK. Both times had been ill in the night and slept in.

How does your employer know you are actually working then? Do u work for yourself?

I don't think the OP is talking about deliberately not sending her child to school. She's talking about a dire emergency like she's died in the night. I understand this fear having been in this situation although my workplace would have noticed and contacted me.

Cause they trust me to do my work and don't have any policies for WFH whereby manager has to take a register of attendance. If I do a site visit that's a different situation

@soreankles but don’t you provide some sort of output from your work, deal with clients etc that your absence, lack of output would be noted?

I once didn't wake up until 11.30 and my stalker at work (co worker) didn't pick up on it. I had covid. She would normally "dob me in" if I spent more than 3 seconds away from my computer.

I’m a teacher. If a child isn’t present by the time the register closes and we haven’t had a message from parents, office staff start calling. They will leave a message if no answer and it goes down as an unauthorised absence.
In some cases where we know of issues at home, 2 members of staff may make a house call but this isn’t the norm.
If a child is absent for 10 consecutive days with no contact from home, only then is it reported to the LA. Which is ridiculous IMO.

I am a teacher and once assumed that my son’s primary school started half term on the same day as my secondary . They called to ask where he was . In bed with me watching Disney on the IPad , oops ! They were fine about it .

They call you.

Like the time they called me and said DS wasn't in school which was news to me as id dropped him off there.

Cue much panic.

Spoiler : he was in school all along but had been sent to do something when they'd taken the register and they hadn't remembered!

Hi OP,
Perhaps you could sign up with a company like this that do welfare calls
https://www.careium.co.uk/telecare-services/telephone-check-in-service/
I have no knowledge of that particular company I just googled it. Do try to check if a service is well reviewed. There might be recommendations if you ask or look at relevant forums.

In your position I would also email the school office and teacher and let them know your concerns and ask if your child is off school unexpectedly and they haven't heard from you/can't get hold of you for a bit after school starts that they arrange a welfare check as you will always let them know if your child is ill.

Really? That’s poor. They have an obligation to check up if you don’t report to work when you should.

Omg. As I said we work from home so we aren't physically in the office. No one is doing head counts when WFH.

Hi I have my mum who Im in touch with. I doubt I would be in the habit of calling anyone, that service is useful for older people, neighbour uses it.

The school would do a wellness check if pupil didn't go to school

That’s reassuring.

That's crazy

@soreankles realistically you need to build a support network. Aside from your mother, it would be a good idea to strengthen ties with the parents of your child’s friends, so someone will notice if either of you don’t turn up as expected.

But the first thing to ensure is that your child, from the moment they’re able, is shown how to phone for help if you don’t seem to be waking up, or fall down the stairs, or whatever. Workshop it with them!

This happened to us once. Dc couldn't sleep, kept taking it in turns to wake up, finally they both fell asleep at 6am. We thought we would try and get an hour of sleep before getting up to do the school run. Ended up sleeping through multiple alarms, wd were so tired. Got a phone call from school at 9:30.

You would get a phone call around 9.30 to check everything was OK and ask where they are. I've had this when I've been too busy managing projectile vomit and forgotten to ring in.

If you don't answer and they can't reach you, they might try the other emergency contacts they have on file or do a home check (more likely to go straight to home check if there are concerns for child) and if they still couldn't reach you, refer on to social services or non emergency police

There should be a lone workers policy for those wfh or in an office on their own. If you have not appeared there should be a protocol to check you are ok.