Work…Ill children

[Holly221288]

Hi,

I wanted a little advice before I hand in my notice tomorrow. I currently work in a secondary school as a SSA. I am a single parent to 3 children, 11, 9 and 5 (with additional needs).

I absolutely adore the kids I work with and am finally doing a job that I could progress into a career. But it comes with no flexibility so for instance today my 5 year old had to come home ill from school but I wasn’t able to leave work. My mum collected him for me but wasn’t happy and she won’t do it again. Is a job in a school just not suitable for single parents? Especially with the Covid times we are living in.

I previously worked in a accounts/payroll position in a mixture of office/homeworking. That position is still available to me but they treated me awfully/I worked 40 hours a week and got paid for 16. But then if it means I can have flexibility maybe it’s better?

Argh please help!

No advice sorry. But,I'd like someone who works in a school or nursery to explain why parents are expected to collect sick children but staff members are not allowed to collect theirs?

I was told that working in a school was the best job as a single parent!

I know at our school staff have left to collect their sick kids. I'm pretty sure that they expect you to sort childcare after 1 or 2 days but you are entitled to dependents leave for cases like this.

Maybe I'm being naive - maybe this is a lot easier for teachers than it is for an SSA, in which case I'm sorry - but my teacher DH has left school/not gone in for sick children on multiple occasions. It isn't an option that he wouldn't; there are two of us but it's never been on the table that I'd cover every time. If your school makes this impossible then there may be others that wouldn't.

Thanks so much for these replies, maybe it’s just a particularly inflexible place

I’m non-teaching school staff. We would be allowed to leave to collect a sick child. Who told you that you couldn’t go?

Perhaps they assumed that you didn’t really need to go as your mum had collected the little one? We’re allowed to be off of children are unwell but they do encourage us to use family childcare favours if appropriate.

They didn’t know I had my mum available to collect him as she’s not hands on at all. Someone else had already left that morning so we are super short staffed hence the no. I’ve never taken time off for the children before but it’s definitely not approved of

I'm not sure it's really approved of in any workplace with set hours, to be honest (it is a bit different if you have flexitime and so can make it up). I think in that situation you're not asking permission to leave, you're telling them you need to.