AIBU to raise concerns after school let father-in-law apply suncream when not an approved collector?

[Tryingtohelp12]

My father in law called in today to drop something off and I said can you do me a favour and drop dc2 Suncream at school I’ve just realised it’s not in her bag and it’s on your way past. Just leave it with the office (my child school has allowed them to take their own cream in this week and apply it themselves). About 20 minutes later came back and he said the office wouldn’t let him leave the cream and had retrieved my child from her classroom and allowed him to apply it.

i have no problem with him actually doing this as we are close and he is trustworthy, but was really surprised, he’s not on the list of approved collectors as he has never done a school run for us and honestly could have been anyone. What if he’d come in and said they need to take child out of school- would they have let him?

I mentioned it to the teacher at pick up who said she will look into it but now I’m worried I have overreacted and got the office staff in trouble.

I also agree.
Social work and school safeguarding background.
I would like to presume the school asked the child away from the man, who he was and if she confirmed then fair enough. However if she’s needing someone to apply cream then I’d be assuming she’s young.

Unless there’s a code word or they have seen the person before as an approved person, then I actually think that it is inappropriate

They also could have called you to confirm you sent him. Before allowing DC to have sun cream. An alternate would be keeping DC in shade and giving you a polite reminder to ensure you apply sun cream or bring sun wear for DC. There are other options here …

Against the grain here as everyone else has said you’re overreacting but I agree. The school shouldn’t be letting people who aren’t known the then , to have access to the child.
luckily this time is wasn’t for a bad reason but if that’s how they operate, it’s concerning.

Given they’ve been allowing the children to take in and apply their own suncream a far more logical solution would be to have had the child put on their own suncream.

They’d have had the choice if they wanted to check with the OP before giving the child the cream if the concern was allergies or the cream.

Allowing the grandfather to physically apply their cream unnecessarily (given the child had been doing themselves the rest of the week) was the worst of all options.

This is not relevant to the post.

I should make a really big fuss if I were you. Be the mum that demands the school stick to “procedure” and risks her daughter suffering the agony of sunburn. A & E is such a wonderful place to spend an afternoon.

So the child gets sunburnt. Do you know how terribly painful sunburn can be?

Why would she suddenly get sunburned when she’d been putting her suncream on herself earlier in the week?

Why not just take the cream and allow the child to apply it herself (checking with the OP if concerned about allergies act)? Zero need for the man they didn’t know to be physically touching the child at all.

I can't get past the fact that you asked your FIL to run past the school and drop off sunscreen for you - do you always ask people to run annoying little errands like that for you? And then complain? Bizarre. You sound very entitled.

I agree as you totally overreacted.

I agree completely with @unbuttonedowl. How embarrassing all round. Who were you trying to catch out. I hope the school investigation prompts a visit by social workers or the police to your FIL so that he knows you were trying to get him into trouble. What is for sure is that office staff will never let him near the place again. It does show that you need to think carefully before you send anyone else on your ‘errands’. Do you ask family members to carry things through customs for you and then tell on them?
In my experience as a teacher schools have to take any safe guarding issue very seriously. It was unbelievably irresponsible of you to direct a totally innocent person to run an errand for you and then ‘inform’ on them. I think back to incidents at school and safeguarding issues were referred to the police. I had a female teacher friend called to a police station and cautioned because a girl accused her of pushing her in the corridor. There was fortunately CCTV and her friends witness statements all of which showed there was no case to answer. Then the girl admitted that she had made it up and didn’t know it would be taken so seriously. My friend left teaching as a result.
It was either the OP being irresponsible, ( who sends an innocent person to run an errand and thinks that the school would allow a teacher to apply cream and then reports them). Or the OP it was behaving maliciously.
One day,@Tryingtohelp12someone may ask you to do them a favour, drop their child home etc and then report you for not having the correct car seat. Imagine how you would feel. Now try and imagine how your FIL will feel if and when he finds out what you have done or how your husband will feel when he finds out you dobbed your FIL in for doing you a favour.

It is the OP’s entitled attitude. She asks her FIL to run an errand and expects it to be delivered to school and then an admin person to ‘deliver’ it to the classroom. Does everyone run errands for you all the time. OP?

In your experience, 'as a teacher', how have you missed the entire point so spectacularly?

The point is the OP sent her innocent FIL on an ‘errand’ that he had not been cleared for. Who do you think was going to deliver the sunscreen at school? Do you really think the school pays an admin person to run errands for parents like the OP? The OP could easily have rung the school and explained her predicament and asked for advice but apparently she didn’t think of that. So instead it has been handed to the class teacher to investigate at the end of a hot day. I am shocked at the entitlement of someone assuming everyone else will run errands for her. The poor FIL as well. How lovely to live in a world where you expect everyone else to to run your errands for you.

And 77% of well over 1,000 voters on MN agree that the OP was unreasonable in her behaviour.

I understand what you're getting at OP, yes. There appears to be a system at the school where any man could turn up and have a child sent out to him where he could then touch them. The only safeguard in place would appear to be the child saying they don't know the man.
And as we know, adults known to children do harm them.
The system would be better if a member of staff had stayed present for the sun cream being applied, but certainly not as tight as it should be.
I'd send a polite email saying while it was absolutely fine in your case, and youre not complaining, it was your error, you know they're busy etc, could you offer a suggestion that only adults with a code word are permitted to do similar.
They may indeed think you're 'one of those parents', but their procedure isn't robust enough and safeguarding is everyone's responsibility.

All week, children have been applying suncream themselves.

School let an unknown (to them) person, apply suncream to a child that was in their care.

There was absolutely no need for that to happen.

Regardless of the OPs behaviour, the school should not have granted any form of access to a child, when the school don't know the adult and the adult isn't on the approved list. That's it. It really is that simple.

For those 77% that agree that he should have had access to that child, I'm beyond grateful that they don't all work in fields relating to safeguarding.

Whilst he was entirely innocent, and the OP has expressed her gratitude, it is right that the schools' procedures are questioned here. It's through situations like this, that schools learn where their safeguarding weaknesses are.

It’s not entitled to drop something off at school that a child has forgotten.

Forgotten suncream, hats, lunches, Pe kits, books, bags etc are dropped off at schools every single day. Dropping off forgotten suncream to a child )who has been applying their own suncream) is an entirely normal thing to do.

Suggesting otherwise is just having a go at the Op for the sake of having a go.

Then the OP should have done the right thing and rung the school beforehand. Not sent her FIL at her request then complain. My feelings are with the FIL and the admin team for being sent to do ‘errands’ for the OP.

My question to the school if I felt like I had to make an issue somewhere is why they didn’t allow him to drop it off if they had relaxed rules this week to allow children to take sun cream in and apply it.

This.

Honestly - please read properly. She isn’t accusing the grandad of anything!

im actually with the OP on this one. I don’t think the school should have allowed this. It could have been a family member who isn’t allowed contact with the child for whatever reason but the child isn’t aware or doesn’t understand.

Outrageous behaviour from the school. They should have let your child burn to a crisp in the heatwave. Schools and teachers literally lose whatever decision they make these days.

@JustAnotherWhinger
Please tell me the role of the member of staff appointed to run errands for parents? Twenty years ago every child in a secondary school gave up a day or half a day of lessons once a year to run errands like this delivering forgotten stuff. Then, quite rightly, this was stopped because it took children away from lessons. So, some poor attendance officer or other admin person has to do the errand running. It all takes time and money. But you suggest, it is the job of the school to pay for an errand runner.
If the OP, for five minutes, had thought through the issue she would have seen the problem but she off loaded her responsibility to someone else. Easy to do. Offload stuff to others. Poor school, poor FIL.
If the OP had done the right thing and delivered the sunscreen herself it would never have happened. No issue. Mum could have taken in the sunscreen and applied it. However, some people always offload stuff to others. Easy and lazy way out.

There’s zero need for the OP to ring the school, creating a call for a staff member to answer, before someone dropped off a forgotten item.

Forgotten items are a daily thing in schools. Zero need to create another job for someone answering an unneeded phone call.

This should have been an absolute non-event. It will have been a non-event in many, many schools last week.