Vulnerability is not just to the virus.

[OpheliasCrayon]

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with people just calling for schools to be shut immediately. I absolutely understand the risks in keeping them open, I work in them and have seen covid spread in my workplace like wildfire. I also don't know what the correct answer is. Fortunately I don't have to make the choices though and for as long as I am required to be in work, I will be, gladly.

I am not in this for a fight. I definitely can't be bothered with that. But I do want to explain and remind people of something which does not come from Science papers, medical journals or government policy. Rather from what I've seen and worked alongside during decades of experience in the classroom working with vulnerable children.

Vulnerability in this situation does not just relate to becoming unwell with covid and dying or getting long term illnesses. I don't belittle those things, this said, I have multiple chronic illnesses and have lived with them for decades and ive lost a child (not to covid) so, I wouldn't ever belittle either thing and understand the gravity and tragedy of both situations...

However when people say that vulnerable children may be in school I'm not sure they are truly understanding the situation. It's true, they can be in school, they should be in school..... Tragically though, the children who are the most vulnerable are not likely to be in school. Their parents for whatever reason may not want /be able to take their children into school. Therefore we, as education staff, cannot keep an eye on the children we MOST desperately need to keep an eye on. Abused, neglected, malnourished children aren't going to be willingly brought into school during a lockdown and if they are not in school them we cannot monitor what is happening to them. If people from outside the family cannot monitor what is going on then we cannot act to keep these children safe.

We may well be protecting the most vulnerable to covid, if we lockdown (I'm CEV so that does technically apply to me although I haven't shieled and worked throughout despite letters but I reserve my right to my personal choice )...but surely we need to, people need to realise that there are other extremely vulnerable people, people who cannot and will not speak out for themselves in the vast majority of cases, people who need us to look out for them.

There is more to life than covid and there are more vulnerabilities than covid. But because of covid we are losing sight of these vulnerable young children more and more and I am wondering do we have chance to get them back into our care if this continues?

Im an SEN teacher but I have been in countless mainstream schools over the years and have enough experience and knowledge in all settings to know these vulnerable children are across all settings.

For those of you who did realise this theny apologies. For those of you who didn't.. then please understand that whilst I hope for you your children are safe, fed, loved and cared for, this is not the same for all children. I have seen things over my years of work which have affected me still 20 years on. I'm not going to repeat them because this isn't what this is about , I'm not going to give details of children's desperately tragic lives to prove my point. But every time we mention vulnerable, we are thinking of the most obvious sort of risk - that of covid itself, but whilst you're calling for schools to shut, please realise what that means.

If we are working together to protect the vulnerable, why are we also not working together to protect the most vulnerable children,? By which I mean mandating school attendance so they have to attend along with their peers, and we can keep the eye that we very much need to keep on ALL the children in our care.

[quote Walkaround]@OpheliasCrayon - social services have a role to play in this too. And GPs. Schools staying “open” but with inadequate funding and staffing, and constant disruptions, is chaotic, inadequate and dangerous, and thus not an effective safety net for vulnerable children, especially if it contributes to the overwhelming of the healthcare system.[/quote]
And this.

@DBML

Schools WERE a safe place for vulnerable children. At the moment they aren’t a safe place for anyone. We need other plans for looking after vulnerable children right now.

This.

I agree with you @OpheliasCrayon

"Social services should be involved. They need more money. Maybe the children should be in care."

If you put all the children classed as vunerable into care which will include many where the parents are doing nothing wrong ( since there is more than one reason why a child would be considered vulnerable ) you would need to open hundreds perhaps thousands of care homes and need thousands of specifically trained staff. Many of these children have needs 24/7 beyond what a foster carer could provide. A child requiring 2:1 support in school would need a team of 8 staff giving close support to look after them in care. Putting them in care will not reduce the spread of the virus. This is on top of all the damage that will be done to them by removing them from their family home.

Agree. Also vulnerable learning disabled adults

My youngest is considered vulnerable due to our family situation.
Throughout school closures his teachers kept in touch with him and me, keeping channels open, offering support where they could.
Other services disappeared off the face of the earth. Our GP remained open but had serious limitations who they could pass on referrals to.
I’m seeing more and more criticism for teachers now, and huge pressure on them to keep going as normal despite schools being a haven for the virus.
Other agencies need to step up here for vulnerable children. Schools cannot bear the brunt of this on their own.
Keeping schools open now without implementing strict safety protocols (and lets face it, the government haven’t done that in 10 months, they’re not going to do it in 2 weeks!) would be dangerously stupid, not just for children and staff, but for wider communities.

And please let’s not suddenly care because vulnerable children are suddenly a good reason to keep schools open.

Very few cared before.
Provision for children with SEN and SN has been shocking for a long time.
Services for vulnerable children are dreadful, and I can’t even remember what they’re called round here as every year or so they change names, rebrand as something amazing, conveniently lose all accountability for their previous incarnations and carry on as normal.
All these people suddenly caring, where were you before?
Fight for better services for the vulnerable, stop using this as yet another stick to beat teachers.

@PaperScissorsRock

And please let’s not suddenly care because vulnerable children are suddenly a good reason to keep schools open.

Very few cared before.
Provision for children with SEN and SN has been shocking for a long time.
Services for vulnerable children are dreadful, and I can’t even remember what they’re called round here as every year or so they change names, rebrand as something amazing, conveniently lose all accountability for their previous incarnations and carry on as normal.
All these people suddenly caring, where were you before?
Fight for better services for the vulnerable, stop using this as yet another stick to beat teachers.

Yup. Agree as a teacher and as a mother of a severely disabled DC.

That is so tight. Who gave a fuck before. Disgusting we live in s country where the only vague refuge for some is school. This cannot be a excuse to put millions at risk. If you really care, campaign against against austerity. In my Dd's school (in SE) they were dropping like flies and the school had no choice but to close. And that was 3 weeks ago. It would be carnage now

@Wallywobbles

In the 1st world country where I live (not uk) it was estimated that 5000 of the most vulnerable children disappeared for the duration without trace during the 1st lockdown. No agencies at all had contact with them during that time.

I assume when the schools reopened they mostly reappeared but I don't know for sure.

In what sense did they disappear? Whay agencies should have had contact with them?

Meringue, in the U.K. there are several agencies that support children/families, from voluntary organisations like Young Carers through to social services, with many in between, I suppose including camhs, and the aforementioned magically changing children’s services.
Voluntary orgs round here pretty much stopped functioning, beyond basic admin.
Children’s services which offered family support, regular contact etc stopped (beyond one phone call).
Other SN related orgs, and related to elective home education (an older dc of mine is HE) stopped, they couldn’t be contacted at all.
Many people locally lost their regular respite, on top of school closures and having to attempt to WFH, on top of other lifelines being closed.

People only care now because it doesn’t suit them to have their dc at home again.

@herecomestheSon I'm not wishing for anything I understand fully why we locked down and have restrictions, I just wasn't buying into @Mumof3andlovingit reasoning at all behind her thoughts

If children aren't safe in their homes why are they being left there?

Provision by social care wouldn't support those who could not cope with the disruption of their routine, many of whom do not even know that covid exists and for who the changes could not be explained to. For this group of children, the majority of whom will be in special school, school is the only practical place where that need could be met. If schools shut completely those children are being abandoned.

I’m with you OP, I do worry about children in the holidays, when the schools are shut and at weekends as well, it’s awful and I feel like they’re the forgotten people.

I'm purposefully not going to start commenting on everything. I had never intended to because I was never going to turn this into a debate or an argument or anything of the sort.

I just wanted to say that there are a few of you on here who I know (to a very small extent - as much as it's possible to know on MN) and knowing a very tiny amount of your personal circumstances and your profession I respect your views, thank you. You definately will know if it's you I'm talking about and I'm not going to name you.

Have a lovely day everyone.

well if the idea that children are safe between 9 and 3 every day so that makes their lives ok, something needs to change

I know exactly what you mean @OpheliasCrayon I think anyone who has worked in schools in deprived areas totally gets it. I work in a prosperous school and there are also children there who for whatever reason don't have a stable life and need the refuge of school.
I'm mainly pro schools opening but the recent stats have me worried. I'm worried about having to isolate as a result of contact with a student and I also have young children who need to isolate from time to time and it's so stressful with work.
Personally I'd love to see education and nursery staff getting the vaccine, followed by Sixth formers with immediate trials for younger people. While I feel sorry for the elderly I don't really see why they are priority on a population level, they've had their education and don't need to go out to work.

Vulnerable has lots of meanings in a covid context. Some children are vulnerable to covid but like everyone else, want an education and deserve to be in school interacting with their peers, just like their peers. Yet the only solution offered to them is for them to stay home, as if their socialisation, education and everything else doesn’t matter. There has been near hysteria about old people being isolated but no one fuck given about children in the same situation.

There is also no consideration given to those children living in households with vulnerable people and/or who are carers. Again, children who need to be educated and socialise with their peers but who are dismissed with ‘stay at home’ and nothing else.

I don’t know the answer but I am sure as hell pissed off with my child’s options right now,

I agree OP. I don’t know what the answer is but I know it’s not the wholesale removal of support. I remember watching an episode of Panorama earlier in the year about the dire situations children with complex needs and their parents were left in when everything just shut down. The parents were given flow charts to identify whether their child qualified for a ‘vulnerable’ place in school and if the answer was no then that was the last they heard.

My goddaughter is on antidepressants and has various co-existing neurological and physical conditions. Her mum received a letter in lockdown saying her CAHMS appointments had all been cancelled because she wasn’t considered a priority. No further word from them after that. This is a very vulnerable little girl and she wasn’t offered anything, I don’t know why they couldn’t even have kept her appointments going via Zoom.

*Skipsurvey

well if the idea that children are safe between 9 and 3 every day so that makes their lives ok, something needs to change*

This!

For the most part ‘vulnerable’ doesn’t mean ‘not safe in their own home’...but where it does...where we truly worry about sending these kids back to their neglectful, abusive parents, why the hell are we doing it?

Surely if a child isn’t safe at home between 8am and 3pm they are equally unsafe between 3pm and 8am? Surely they are no safer on a Saturday or a Sunday? or during the holidays? The bigger question is HOW is this even an issue? WHY is it an issue? And what should we be doing about it rather than expecting it to be some random geography teacher’s problem?!

Yes, yes, yes!!!

I hate this weaponising of 'vulnerable children' (and I was one as a child in foster placements).

There's never a thread about them on MN until people want to push the 'schools open at all costs' line. I remember seeing quite a few threads about 'vulnerable children' in the spring then none until there's another threat of school closures.

Schools are open 6/7 hours a day, five days a week for 39 weeks of the year. Everyone who works with this demographic knows that holiday periods, especially the extended summer break, is the worst time for these kids. Yet not one single thread there has been since spring until there's mention of schools possibly delaying opening on site in January.

The most vulnerable children don't have much contact with the school system in ordinary times. The national 'persistent absence' rate for secondary is 13% of children. That's hundreds of thousands of children who hardly touch the radar of school during their teens.

Missing children? All sorts of ways. One of my dd's friends in Y6 was shipped off abroad to be married when she was 12 and became the mother of twins at 13 years of age, all perfectly legally in her country.

Although I do agree that the govt's decision to suspend the curriculum in the spring was disastrous, as it meant that schools had none of their usual procedures eg escalating persistent absences to the LA to use. I hope that 'registering' at least with usual follow ups if children don't is mandated in any further school closures.

Nah, close the schools to stop the spread of the virus. It's simple really.