How to deal with friends claiming to be 'key workers'

[McDougal]

Just as the title says, really. I know a lot of admin staff in the NHS. A lot support inpatient services and have a real impact on keeping things moving. Others are PAs to managers who will be making decisions impacting upon patient care, but could do this themselves without a PA forwarding this communication on their behalf.

How do you deal with this? One friend is continuing to take her child to nursery as she's a 'key worker' when her husband is temporarily at home as his job has come to a standstill and I'm struggling to be sympathetic.

Maybe a large sign saying ‘please leave this service only for those key workers who have no other options’ would be the way forward. The service is desperately needed and overfilling it could lead to more people/teachers becoming ill and then it could become available to no one.

Waw u have the audacity to sit here bitching about an NHS worker expected to be at work and is put a CV risk to keep the NHS running as usual.

Ppl like you make me sick, nasty judgemental and fail to mind their business in difficult situations.

Just don't get involved
Why do you need to deal with this?

Etc etc.

Because they’re spreading the virus & that affects ALL of us. Schools being open is for emergency childcare not for kids where a parent can look after them!!

JFC when will people understand that this is serious and people need to stay home!! Unless you’re a genuine key worker, STAY HOME

We are in a difficult one as key workers not NHS but have been allowed to work from home for bow. The key is for now. As people get sick there is a real possibility we will be called to thr front line to help with key services. I have told school I will keep the kids home as long as possible but if we are both called then there would be nobody home.

Also if my husband or I were called not sure how one of us could work from home with kids in their own.. It would be very tough but I would try.

The list was pretty expansive as it isn't just NHS workers who are essential. The nation right now would grind to a halt should the Internet collapse...or the food chain get interrupted...etc

Hannah I’m not sure that that is what’s she’s doing at all. We all need to support the key workers and if this childcare service is overloaded when people have other options then it could end up closed down as teachers become ill. Then what would happen, it would be a disaster.

PA in the NHS WILL absolutely be a jeyworker right now. We need the medics tone free to do what they do nbdst & have someone else facilitating that.

PA to someone in most other businesses. No.

Amelie Taylor - ALL NHS staff are key workers. Everyone single one, including volunteers.

Well this isn’t pretty.

Why the husband isn’t looking after the kids needs to be explored, there could be a reason, other than he’s a “lazy arse”. But your friend is a key worker and she is to go in.

Your post is written as an attack on her and her role. I’m surprised you call her a friend as your behaviour towards her is not pleasant.

Many of my friends are key workers, as am I, although not in the NHS. My office is running because of our skeletal admin staff - as many people as we can have working from home, we do, but there is an essential business need for some admin people to be in to enable the front functions to work effectively and efficiently. I’m not a doctor but I don’t think it’s efficient to have eg a top consultant updating the discharge notes. There must be loads of people having non-covid 19 care prioritised, re-scheduled, emergency care re-allocated etc.

DD is frontline nhs, they are now getting twice daily briefings from management on new procedures, current situation etc. Presumably these have been minuted, typed up and distributed by some NHS PA that you deem not a key worker?

There will be a limit on space as we need to keep children in small groups in different rooms and your friend might find she is at the bottom of the list. Also, there's been a lot of things shared on social media now about the dangers of unnecessary journeys and spending time with other children, and some of that will trickle through to her social circle.

On Monday the Gov will be collecting up numbers and if there are more than 10 -15 percent of children in school there will be a lot if questions asked about what the point was of closing in the first place.

It's a time when Heads need balls as schools in different areas will have different pressures. People are slowly grasping that they will have to abandon their luxuries of "adult time" and work in a very different way.

Both parents need to be met workers and proof must be provided on Monday morning through the form of contracts/pay slips/employers letter etc. If she can't show that she won't get a place and told to take her child away.

Her husband should be looking after the kids. End of. Regardless of how important her NHS role is, she cant say to work "I'm going to stay at home as I dont think I'm important" She has to go to work, it isn't her decision to make. She may well be redeployed if her job isn't essential..that wont have happened yet it's in the planning stages right now.

Her husband should be taking care of the child. The child should not be at school.
Tell her that and then leave it.

Unless you're working in the NHS at the minute you honestly have no idea how much things have changed and how vital all of our staff are. Admin staff are being run ragged and are being redeployed to support testing, to monitor absences and service status, to support new services, to pick up and deliver supplies, to monitor emails, to communicate with staff, to put up posters, to sort out it issues, to order supplies, to train other staff, to arrange virtual meetings, to step in for other staff who are serious isolating, to do all they can to help. They are key workers

Schools should only be open for DCs who have 2 parents who are key workers.

The rest need to parent their children, lazy sods.

The NHS will be swamped in the coming weeks, and the need for the situation to be managed by NHS managers will be more acute than ever. Expecting them to do this without existing PA support is crazy. PAs aren’t employed as a luxury who just make the tea and fill a space in the office

It would be like saying, “surely we don’t need nurses... Doctors should be able to do those jobs if needed” just at a time when doctors will be under more pressure than ever... It’s batshit.

I’m not a PA by the way and haven’t classified any of the 100 staff in my local authority team as a key worker in case you think I have a personal axe to grind on this.

If they work for the NHS they are key workers, doesnt matter what they do for them. Dont really see why you are poking your nose in and getting worked up by it.

Think the actually list of key workers will change soon, at least this is my prediction.

If you look at the pictures coming out of Lombardy with tents as hospitals, it won't be an issue of admin staff having to go to work and what is deemed, 'essential,' will be way pared down.

It's so frustrating that a lot of people aren't staying put and it will take the government ordering them to do so.

I'm a PA for a surgeon who looks after patients who need a very specialist type of acute care that cannot be delayed until after coronavirus. Without me, his patients wouldn't be in the right place at the right time for him to operate on them.

Nothing to do with coronavirus cases, but people still have severe medical problems that cannot wait until the crisis is over.

The surgeon physically needs me with him to organise several very important things for the clinics.

Think before you post. Be kind.

The key point in the document is that if you are able to leave your child at home with a parent then do that. It doesn’t matter that she is a PA it’s not your job to decide IF she is a critical worker. She IS a critical worker. DH works in IT for bank, he supports daily banking activities. It may sound unneeded but to the government he is a critical worker. As such, school offered him a place for our child however I am able to care for our child at home which is the safest option.

The issue with your friend is that her DH should care for their child/ren. End of. In mumsnet speak, you don’t have a friend problem she has a DH problem.

@MrsMGE

FFS All that is irrelevant. You have missed the point entirely.

If the DH isn’t a keyworker, they shouldn’t be sending their kids to school, in the same way as he wouldn’t be able to if he was a single dad. The fact his company has important stuff to do is of secondary importance, otherwise we’d all be “keyworkers” and the whole thing would be pointless.

My question related to the use of childcare which, in my view, was not essential.

You do realise everyone can see your thread title and your OP, don’t you?

The title and most of your post was about multiple people claiming to be key worker’ who you you didn’t think were. And your question was how you dealt with that.

The friend who had a dh at home was dropped in as the last line. Presumably because you knew exactly what reaction you were going to get when you did it.

Name change test

I think that with primary schools overburdened that year 5/6 kids could go to secondaries where there is space, as there is a bigger staffing pool that can rotate in.
My friends secondary has 60 kids signed up to go in, they could handle more if they had to.

Rather than all this fighting over who counts as important enough.