Nursery will not calpol

[Audiomated]

Dad here. Nursery says they cannot now give paracetamol to 2 yo unless it has been prescribed. Can anyone enlighten me please? It is not always possible to drop work and dash to the nursery because child has a temperature and I do not understand why nurseries can no long give a dose of calpol pending collection of the poorly child.

Very often doctors don’t prescribe paracetamol any more because of the low over the counter cost. Schools and nurseries need to catch up! I had an argument with my DC’s school with this when they had a broken arm, doctor said give pain relief which school initially refused to administer because it was bought not prescribed. A call to the head and they saw sense...

My nursery and school will and I would be moving my dd2 to another nursery if they didn't (Or I guess a wasteful trip to gp for Calpol prescription). She has chronic ear infections and needs it on a fairly regular basis.

Ours won’t as it can mask symptoms but it is in their policy and I knew before I chose it. I know other nurseries will.

Those are the rules, you need to have someone available to go in and do it for you, if not prescribed.
It's the same as schools and nurseries here. I'm emergency cover for two friends who couldn't leave work to do it either.

Not all children are actually sick enough to be at home when they have a temperature.

DC1 only gets a temperature when he is properly ill, so it would be a fair enough policy in his case. DC2 gets a temperature fairly frequently, sometimes it's just a cold and sometimes we can't even work out why as other than a temperature she's fine and the next day there's nothing wrong at all. Thankfully their nursery gives calpol rather than immediately sending home.

If your child has a temprature don't send them to nursery

@Drogosnextwife why? Kids have temperatures for a number of reasons, it doesn't mean they are unwell/in pain or need to be off nursery. How are you expecting their parents to fund this day off work to look after them, normally unpaid?! If my son was unwell I would absolutely take a day off; unpaid. If he was well but with a slight temperature then he would be at nursery, otherwise I would be off over 2/3 times a month and losing hundreds of pounds to spend a day with my perfectly well child who is a bit hot!!

Children don't get a temperature when they are "perfectly well". You can't kid yourself all you like. They may bot be seriously unwell, but they are not "perfectly well". A slight temp in a child can escalate very quickly and become pretty serious. One of the reasons nurseries don't like to give medication, it masks symptoms so difficult to tell if it's getting worse.

I agree. Temperatures are there for a reason. They aren’t just “a bit hot”. It’s a symptom of illness.

I think your child's health comes before a job, unless of course the child only has one parent.
You need to find cover for when they are unwell.
I can never understand why people say they can't drop work when they have ill kids.

As far as I was aware this has always been the case with nurseries/schools? My eldest is almost 17 and this was the case when they were little. Only prescribed medicines.

Of course your child's health comes before a job, and as per my post I would absolutely take a day off if my child is unwell. However no I would not take a day off work because my child has a temperature due to teething, I would be off work a lot and can't afford that. Although their health comes before my job, their health is also dependent on my job being able to feed and provide for them.

unless of course the child only has one parent.
Don't understand this bit at all?! So one parent losing a salary for a day if in a relationship is less important than a single parent, despite the fact both families could be just as dependant on the money?

It's up to individual settings what their policy is.
I won't give calpol for a temperature and sick children have to go home.

You shouldn't be marking a child's infectious illness with calpol so you can send them in and not be inconvenienced anyway but yes it's standard practice that they only give drugs when prescribed.

Some schools won't even do that

*maskng

Umm I think he ment pending collection not instead of collection? My partner works an hour or more away if he was a single parent and was more than an hour away that policy could have repercussions on the child

My nursery gives calpol. I just had to sign a form

Actually my child does have random temperatures he has been blood tested and everything there is literally nothing wrong with him he wakes up his temp is up one dose of calpol or ibuprofen and he is fine even after it wears off it happens all the time

The EYFS (the statutory guidance that early years settings must follow) states that medicines should not normally be administered unless they have been prescribed. Or something like that. But, You can probably blame the parents that came before you at the nursery for their policy regarding medicine. I’ve worked in childcare for many years and by saying that they won’t give medicine, they are doing their best to keep poorly children away from the setting and at home. Children are not known for keeping their germs to themselves and if one child has something, often others will probably get it too. Despite trying to keep everywhere clean, children don’t understand hand washing, putting their hands in front of their nose/mouth when they cough/sneeze or putting toys in their mouths and germs get passed around so easily.

So it’s not as simple as you deciding to send your poorly child to nursery. There are probably consequences for other families and staff members (who probably don’t get sick pay) who then catch your child’s germs. (And please don’t tell me that they probably caught their germs from nursery so what does it matter- that’s my point - of poorly children weren’t there, there would be no germs to catch!).
If your child is poorly, just keep them at home. They will recover much quicker and be much happier being quiet at home, rather than being part of a group where the practioner is struggling to split her time between the well children and your poorly one. And when you say give a dose of calpol pending collection, do you mean at normal picking up time or in response to you getting a phone call at lunch time to say your child is ill? Because when you phone a parent and tell them that their child needs to go home because they are poorly but agree to give them a dose of calpol while you wait and then 4 hours later the parent still hasn’t arrived, it makes you quite cross. maybe you wouldn’t do that, but there are parents out there who think that this is an acceptable thing to do (because they are paying for the service) and it is really unfair on their children.

If you're giving calpol in a school or nursery you need to be sure when the last dose was taken - or wait four hours from when the child came into the setting. I'd be concerned if it's been given out without checking with parents first just because you've signed a form. Giving medication requires training and should always be recorded when given, medicines need to be checked each time they're given and unless medically trained there should be a second person checking and signing the record sheet. It's not as simple as just dishing out a spoon of calpol . Hence why a lot of nurseries and schools won't give meds' now.
It should be prescribed however a lot of nhs trusts will no longer prescribe calpol

Interesting to see the range of responses and range of practices in different nurseries. Seems to me there is a balance to be struck between the duty of care that nurseries have and the commitments that working parents have. Obviously if a child has something serious (ds had chicken pox a few weeks ago and yes, I did take time off ) then work will have to wait. But nurseries are supposed to be run by trained staff who should be able to give one dose of Calpol as long as parents have provided signed consent. What is helpful is seeing that there are pragmatic nurseries who will give one dose then expect the child to be collected within 1 to 4 hours. That makes sense, and if they can do it why can't others?

What is less helpful are comments like "if your child is sick, they should not be in the nursery". Obviously no parent wants to drop a sick kid at the nursery or mask symptoms with medicine. But if there are no grandparents on hand to help, and both parents work, it is not possible to take time off from work every occasion the child has a cold/sneeze/runny nose/slight fever or any other of the almost non-stop symptoms kids are prone to when young, especially during the winter months. Plus, it turns out that apparently a bug had been going around the nursery so ds got it from there, it seems, in the first place. As for time, it was 3:30 and they wanted me to drop work and head over to collect the child immediately - even though I would have been collecting at 5 pm anyway. Which was my point: I fail to understand a policy that would stop nursery staff from giving a dose of Calpol pending collection of a child within 1-4 h and the comments on this forum suggest significant variation in practice.

@Audiomated

Your DCs have a bug, but you take them in. They pass said bug on. More kids have said bug. Their parents send them in, more kids get the bug. Nurseries are full of sick kids, who need more attention than well kids and pass their bugs onto staff/parents/more kids. Etc. So in an ideal world kids would not go in sick, and it's up to the setting to decide their policy on degrees of illness. So some will say, snuffles yes, fever no. Others would say snuffles yes, fever yes, chicken pox no. It's all about where they draw that line.

Finally, I am all for the clogging up constrained GP services with requests for paracetamol (!) but if we are saying that nursery staff are incapable of giving 5 ml of calpol properly (having checked time of the last dose) we should be worried about what calibre of people are looking after our children in the first place.

Well yes ideally they would be trained in first aid etc. So wouldn't be concerned about administering basic medication or even things like CPR but I don't see where the funding would come from?

Do nurseries have to follow the "medical needs in schools" requirements? In maintained schools medication has to be labelled and prescribed and a "care plan" had to be agreed with parents - even if its "just" calpol. I think ad-hoc medicating is a minefield tbh, and if I were a nursery worker I'd be very uncomfortable with making that level of decision about caring for an unwell small child.