My son has been picked to help at reception today. This involves sending messages and collecting children for pick up.
As a part of this, he has been sent around the school to collect children who have a family member who has begun to display symptoms, so that they can go home to self isolate for fourteen days. So he has been in contact with every child in school now in self isolation.
I called school and three people tried to fob me off. They told me that they have no confirmed cases (when they haven’t been tested so cannot definitively say one way or another). They told me that they are adhering to guidelines and any of these symptoms could also be a common cold. I’m not a hysterical parent and am fully aware of that, but they are also the symptoms of a current global pandemic. They told me he hasn’t been in contact with children who are displaying symptoms at school because they are placed into isolation. I’ve since found out that he was sent to collect a child who had a continuous cough which was reported to staff but the child herself didn’t want to leave so had to be collected by him when her parent came. He was also told to collect the belongings of a girl who came to reception complaining of feeling unwell, had her temperature taken and was running a fever. She went to collect her things and staff told her not to and sent my son instead. At no point was he reminded of hand washing so he didn’t wash his hands at all. The other girl doing collections with him was displaying symptoms from the morning and told staff three times before she was collected. Upon hearing her coughing, she was told to drink water and see how she felt because she was having fun and felt ok.
Staff told me that he could have come into contact with those children anyway, during lessons and in corridors. I was aware of that when I sent him to school. I didn’t expect them to engineer a situation in which he was guaranteed to come into contact with every potential case.
I feel this a huge oversight and no thought has been given to the safety of my son. It is entirely inappropriate for a child to be sent to do this. Absolutely no common sense or basic infection control at all. I was quite offended when a staff member told me that children don’t tend to succumb to the illness or aren’t badly affected. She is not a scientist or a doctor. It is not ok for them to decide increase the risk of exposure for my child because he’ll probably be fine.
I am expecting the head to try to fob me off tomorrow and I get quite nervous during confrontation so would like to be prepared. I trusted the school to keep my son safe as they have reassured us they will to the best of their ability, whilst accepting that there will be a risk. They have now increased that risk. How would you deal with this?