Teachers and Social Workers - some advice before a lovely boy drops through the holes in the systeM?

[onebatmother]

A lovely boy in DS's school (year 1) has a mother who is a single parent and chronically ill. She has a sister who lives over an hour away, who looks after her son when she is very ill (every couple of months I think) for a few days at a time. During this time he doesn't attend school.

His mother is a lovely woman but struggles with her illness. They have a social worker who was brought in at the mother's request because she wanted both school and SS to see that she was trying to face the problems head-on.

She has to go into hospital annually or so, and it can be for up to a month. About three months ago she went in again, and temporarily removed her son from our school so that he could attend school with his cousins while staying with her sister, and not miss out on his education. She informed the school and SS.

When she returned from hospital she discovered that he had been taken off the roll, and his place had been allocated to another child on the waiting-list (because it had been longer than a month?).

She has been offered a place at another local school, which is a much longer walk away, which she doesn't want to take because of her illness.

In any case, it would be traumatic for her son who, having struggled slightly to make friends, had been doing really well. He's bright and gorgeous. School is providing consistency and continuity in his fairly chaotic life.

I am absolutely devastated for her.
I feel as though I am watching a statistic develop before my eyes. This is seems to me to be a perfect example of how incredibly hard it is for the disadvantaged to cling onto their place in society, and how f*ing easy it is for something which I, for example, could overcome (network of friends with cars, family, not on the breadline etc) to bugger your life-chances. It makes me so angry and I can barely meet her eye because she seems so embarrassed to have 'let her son down' like this, having promised him that the move was temporary. He must be feeling completely bewildered, and angry.

I would like to help her if I can. The problem is that she is a bit chaotic and also not very good with the details - so I would really appreciate it if anyone could help me with these questions:

A: what is the legal situation here, on the details I've provided?

B: what additional information do I need from her, in order to be able to help?

C: Whom should I approach, if she's willing for me to do so on her behalf)

D: what angle should I take? Compassionate grounds? Lone parent? Anything I should not say?

Thanks very very much if you have any advice.

Onebat.

ps i posted this on Chat first, sorry for the double-up.

Helpful bump OBM.

As far as I know the school are perfectly entitled to do this. I am surprised they have though. I would have thought contacting the governers would be one way to go, but I hope someone more knowledgeable come along soon.

thanks katepol.

onebat, how terrible. Sounds as though the social worker should be intervening but isn't.

If not, I think letters to governors and local MPs are in order.

Just as an aside, if you do decide to go the MP route, write to her MP and ask him to raise it with the relevant authorities. It's better that way than writing directly to eg, Sec of State for Education as the minister must reply to MPs whereas members of the public who write in get letters from civil servants.

Not sure it's relevant in this case as the MP would be writing to the local authority rather than the Sec of State but worth bearing in mind if it gets escalated.

And well done for picking this up. It's a terrible, and avoidable, situation.

thanks margo hadn't thought of local mp - who is actually pretty good so well worth a shot.

How many are in the Year 1 classes? As you probably know, there is a fairly strict limit of 30 on infant classes, so if they already have 30 in all the Year 1 classes (including this extra child taken off the waiting list), it might be difficult.

Awful situation - agree it shouldn't have happened, but if the classes are full now, it might be very difficult to reverse. It would also be very tricky for the waiting list child to be removed now I guess (and very disruptive for him/her).

Sorry, that sounded more 'doom and gloom' than I meant it to! What I meant to say really was that if there is still space at the school, all that might be needed is a sensibly worded appeal to the school to take him back, under the circs. However, if the school is now full, you will probably need to go to the LEA / MP as suggested.

Bramshott, thanks, I think that they are all up to their limit. Which surprises me actually as we are in an area with a fluid population and a fair amount of recent arrivals, and I thought that the school kept a couple of emergency places open.

The waiting list child has already begun, in any case. The boy I'm talking about has been without a school place since the end of last term..

what an awful thing to happen. What exactly is the social workers role in all this. Surely this is the exact sort of thing a social worker should be resolving?

yes I would have thought so too, nametaken. I haven't really got a proper handle on the situation yet, and I wonder whether it's because the ss were involved at the mother's request? Though seems unlikely.

I wonder if it happened because he attended the other school and therefore was registered/enrolled at the other (temporary) school. Can a child be officially registered at more than one school?

I don't know Cam - I'd thought that it was a temporary arrangement but ...

I think one of the difficulties is going to be pinning his mother down on the details because in the past it's seemed a bit as though she is not always aware of the need to be exact in some things (I always repeat things back to her to check that it is what she meant to say.)

This is one of the reasons that I want to get involved actually, because I can see that this fact could easily end up having devastating consequences. One of the things I meant by life-chances ikswim - it could so easily spiral, simply because she hasn't had the experience of dealing with The Authorities.