Accused of trespassing for helping a child

[tatt]

anyone know if there is more to this story or is it health & safety gone mad again? health&safety

I saw this in the DM - there is a comment written by someone claiming to be the boy's mother stating that this woman has tried to access the premises many times, and not this one occasion 'as she would have you believe'. Sounds very odd.

anyone an post a comment claiming to be the mother, including a head-teacher trying to defend their position. If true I would expect that to be mentioned in other papers too.

Never believe what's written in the DM

There's going to be a lot of the story missing here because it's the DM. If I were a teacher and a six year old climbed up a tree and refused to come down, I'd leave him there too, and then he'd be disciplined for breaking rules when he came down. This woman who was passing probably had this explained to her, which she ignored. If a teacher had gone up after him, then dropped him or hurt him during the rescue, you'd bet your bottom dollar the parents would be trying to sue the school. Am fed up of teacher-bashing stories in the DM, which are then seized upon and picked apart by their baying mob of a readership

the story I linked to was in the guardian and the telegraph version is here telegraph

What concerns me is that the school contacted the police for someone trying to help a child.

in this case there's actually more story in the DM than the other newspapers, and more to make you think it's not as simple as it sounds.
MN's kneejerk reaction to the DM does sometimes fly in the face of the evidence.... other newspapers are not paragons of truth and objectivity either!

It seems perfectly sensible to me to watch from a distance initially, for the reasons they have stated. Obviously they would need to do something if the child was genuinely stuck.

Random memberrs of the public coming on to school grounds would worry me more in terms of health and safety.

tatt I do appreciate the fact that your link wasn't the DM, I realised that after I posted.

I also appreciate the fact that most newspapers bend the truth to say the least.

The police weren't contacted because she was helping a child, but because she was trespassing. I'm sure there is much more to the story then is printed.

Well the school says it was aware the child was up the tree and could monitor the child from the school. (if so why didn't they immediately come out and stop the woman helping the boy?)

The woman says they couldn't see the boy from the school because of line of sight and didn't know he was missing ( not unusual my DD aged five was often left outside until one of her classmates pointed this out to the teacher ).

It then says she helped him down (so obviously he was stuck or didn't take much persuassion).

The head says he called the police because she was tresspassing ( which is stupid ) but he claimed she was verbal.

I suspect the school didn't realise the boy was there and when the woman gave the head a piece of her mind he decided to cover his butt and take revenge on the woman by calling the police.

If he just called the police because the woman went into the school and helped a child in need this is a very sorry day for everyone involved and the head should be thoroughly ashamed of himself.

If I were the woman i'd say charge me and i'll have my day in court.

atlantis reading the various reports I suspect that the woman got a little crosss that the school didn't seem to have noticed the boy was missing. So she ticked them off and to cover up they came up with the story about how she shouldn't have got over a gate.

So it sounds like the head went to the police because she told him off for apparent neglect.

Reading various reports, I suspect that the woman is a grade A loon!

i would not want random members of the public climbing over into my DCs school grounds. But I would also not expect a child to be left outside up a tree alone?

there is deffo more to this story than we are being told.

but really, if you saw a child in a tree would you actually scale a locked gate and get him down???

no, you would call to him and ask if he needed help, and then you would tell him to stay there while you went to the school office and informed them

probably not if it was the gate in the pictures - but a lower gate for a 5 year old yes. I'd even go over the gate in the picture if I couldn't see another way to get into the school as the sign tends to suggest its how you get to reception anyway. I'd be concerned about them falling while I went to get help. She had a good reason to go into the school.

Why on earth were the police called? Haven't they got better things to do?

So, we should all ignore children who get into difficulties then, thats clear.

He wasn't being ignored. Police were called because there was a stranger in the school grounds who was being aggressive.

According to the report, there were no clues that he wasn't being ignored, because nobody else was there. What I dont understand is, if they were observing him from a distance, why didnt they see the woman helping him down? and why didnt someone come out? If she was such a suspicious stranger, surely they should have feared that she would abduct the boy?

The aggression thing is pure unpleasantness. If she was being aggressive, they should have called the police then and there. More likely, she accused them, they reacted aggressively, she reacted with more aggression, and they decided to use the police to get a spiteful little revenge after the event.

Look to all the teachers here quoting the health and safety as a net to hide in, you are skating on thin ice, after what happened to the boy at Offerton High School in Stockport left to die durin an Asthma attack.

Councils are insured against litigation, it is very rare that huge sums are paid out by schools to parents, the whole ambulance chasing lawyer culture also exagerated by the press is not as prevalent as would be believed . It is the "fear" of litigation
and this fear philosophy is drummed into teachers from the moment they start training common sense flies out the window. I have been teaching in different pre-schools for 10 years I have fully comp insurance for children who are injured in my excercise classes. If a child falls over and cries and puts their arms out foy a reassuring hug i will do it. To hell with Health and Safety
10 years later I am still waiting to fight off these hordes of litigious parents. In many cases it is an imagined evil and it destroys normal sensible relations with staff and pupils and IMHO it makes teachers uncaring in what surely is a caring profession! Also some of you start off on the premise that all parents are the enemy it is such a poisonous attitude.

By The way I don't just include Teacher Training in this the whole "dont do that they might sue" ethos has permeated everywhere even St John's Ambulance. I have just finished renewing my First Aid cert and we were told to avoid doing CPR or even touching an injured person unless it was absolutely necessary. The advice dont touch them until ambulance arrives unless they stop breathing of they start spurting huge amounts of arterial blood. Wwhat really annoyed me was that our lecturer did not feel any shame by proxy for passing out this "necessary" info designed to protect us from litigation, she seemed more proud of her "pocket" legal knowledge and jargon than delivering life saving facts. I just kept thinking of the PCSO'S who stood and waited by a pond 2 years ago rather than even attempting to save the drowning boy.Health and Safety = cowards charter to do sod all!

typos sorry, rant over

"Look to all the teachers here quoting the health and safety as a net to hide in, you are skating on thin ice, after what happened to the boy at Offerton High School in Stockport left to die durin an Asthma attack."

Could you be any more offensive, do you think, bernadette? I read between the lines, mainly because of the comment by the boy's mother, who says that this isn't the first time the woman has tried to access the school premises and that she is glad that the school stopped this loon woman getting access to her son.

if the rescuer had attempted to access the school premises before the rescue then I have no doubt the school would have mentioned it. The papers would have picked that up. So I don't believe the post is from the child's mother.

We have a child in our school who regularly runs away. Scaling walls/trees/fences is well within his repertoire. If he went up a tree (as he did once, and threw things at anyone who ventured near, but Head was told he couldn't be temporarily excluded for the offence as she couldn't prove that he'd ever been explicitly told not to!), then I would imagine that the very last thing he needed would be an audience. So it's more than likely that the staff in this case knew exactly where the lad was and were dealing with it according to advice given by the appropriate agencies.

The school in question's website ishere. It includes a letter from the headteacher and a statement from the child's mother:

"?I am amazed at the gullibility of the press and some of the general public. My child was never stuck in a tree
and was very unhappy about a stranger approaching him in his school. I appreciate that the woman may have
thought that she was doing the right thing, but there are proper procedures to follow and she shouldn?t walk
past classrooms and staff to get at a child. The staff were doing their job and were fully aware that my son
was there. They were also aware that a stranger was approaching him. They intercepted her to ensure there
was no possibility of my son being removed from the premises. All I can say is thank God the staff behaved in
the manner they did. I don?t know what the lady?s intentions were but I am really glad that I didn?t have to
wait to find out. I fully support the actions of the school both before the incident and since.?

The headteacher's letter states that it was the boy's mother who contacted the police, and that they had been informed regarding three incidents involving this woman.