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Parenting

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My Daughter with SEN was left hungry at school

338 replies

Dolphin7 · 13/06/2021 23:42

I'm just after advice really, a child in my DDs class was confirmed as being Covid-19 positive (he's fine asymptomatic), the whole class was sent home. My phone had run out of battery (Typical!! The only time my phone doesn't have charge!!) and I was unreachable. My other half had been contacted and could not collect earlier than the normal collection time due to work commitments and travel etc. I was able to charge my phone and received the messages mid afternoon, therefore I was only able to collect my daughter 20mins earlier than her normal collection time. When I did collect her she told me she hadn't been allowed to have lunch because of the Covid-19 case in her class (not being allowed to enter the lunch hall I understand, but no one thought to feed her at all!!), so she'd been left to go hungry the whole day apart from some birthday sweets she found in her bag!! Am I being unreasonable to be upset that the school allowed my daughter with SEN (she's on the autistic spectrum) to go hungry the whole day? I understand that I should have been contactable and I always am, just very unfortunate that on the only day ever that my phone didn't charge properly I needed it the most 😫
What would you do now? Complain to the school or beyond?
Thank you in advance for any advice given 🙂

OP posts:
Excilente · 14/06/2021 10:06

Has the OP mentioned her being at work, or just that her phone was dead and she didnt get the message til she charged it?

anxiouscrazymum · 14/06/2021 10:07

Love how this is totally a parent fail and yet you have decided to move your guilt and blame the school!
Why should the school staff risk their lives (covid kills).
You and OH were in the wrong here and not the school!
I would say own it but in typical MN fashion you are not interested in people telling you that you are BU!!

Sawyersfishbiscuits · 14/06/2021 10:07

You definitely need an extra contact person or two.
I have both of us, plus DGparents and grown up DD.

But they absolutely should have brought her lunch! Something went wrong there.

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about these subjects:

YellowFish12 · 14/06/2021 10:07

Like, what adult runs out of phone battery?! Keep a battery pack charged with you as a back up if this is a regular occurrence.

Why on earth didn't your DP make some kind of effort contact YOU if he couldn't get in himself? Call your workplace, colleges, email you?!

What if your daughter had been in a really bad accident?! You would have just shrugged your shoulders and said 'oh well'?

CaraherEIL · 14/06/2021 10:08

Ok so other friends might not have wanted to pick her up due to Covid and I presume it didn’t occur to your partner to contact your workplace to get a message to you. Obvs your partner assumed if she was at school they would give her lunch, the whole thing is such a catalogue of errors on all parts I don’t think you can reasonably complain to the school. But when you contact to say you have been charged for a school lunch that was not provided I would mention it.

RuleWithAWoodenFoot · 14/06/2021 10:10

Just to consider - it's hard when a bubble closes. Logistically.

We need to move children out really quickly. Staff too. The room is closed while they are in there, toilets are allocated and other children have to be diverted, there is government office stuff to be done, so someone is doing that, there are letters to go out, someone is doing that, someone with the children, someone to run children back and forth to exit doors, someone on the exit door to meet parents/deal with concerns, someone to get children's stuff from the cloakroom and run it to the classroom, someone to get lunches if necessary. Meanwhile children (and staff) are upset, the rest of the school staff get an email, other staff are upset/anxious.

Last time I happened to be out of class. I had to mop up the class teacher in the toilets, deal with a crying TA, 3 crying children, then I ran lunches back and forth up the corridor, then I escorted children to the allocated toilets. Meanwhile the head was on the door, the class teacher pulled herself together and started sorting out work packs to go home (without leaving the room, so other TAs were pulled out of other classes to get work through the photocopier, another admin person was putting those things together in envelopes).

And then parents don't pick up the phone, or just can't quite get to pick a child up. Who might already be distressed.

Yeah, it's a super situation for all.

They still should have fed her something though.

CaraherEIL · 14/06/2021 10:11

I would be more frustrated with myself and even more with my partner if this had happened though.

bookish83 · 14/06/2021 10:11

@Excilente

Has the OP mentioned her being at work, or just that her phone was dead and she didnt get the message til she charged it?
This is actually a really good point. Makes it even worse if not working and still had a dead phone!
GrettaGreen · 14/06/2021 10:12

But the school clearly would have thought someone was coming to get her asap? Why would they start organising a meal for her when they had told a parent she needed collecting? Unless your DP explicitly said she'll just have to stay there until the usual time. Most people would assume although he said he couldn't do it, he'd have organised someone else.

RuleWithAWoodenFoot · 14/06/2021 10:13

Just added it up. 9 adults were directly involved in the hour after our last bubble closed. Some of whom were having a massive wobble themselves.

Funfortheroad · 14/06/2021 10:13

It just sounds like a really unfortunate series of events really.

You - running out of battery. Husband - being too far away and not making damn sure someone was picking up his child (which he absolutely should have done, no excuses). School - assuming that you'd pick her up swiftly and then when that didn't happen, not finding something for her to eat in lieu of the missed lunch. If anything, I think the school's error is the least of the three but it's just a bit crap all round and I think given no harm was done you should just move on.

Reallyreallyborednow · 14/06/2021 10:15

Has the OP mentioned her being at work, or just that her phone was dead and she didnt get the message til she charged it?

She also hasn’t said whether her DH routinely works 3hrs + away or whether he was travelling for work…

Myxisaprat · 14/06/2021 10:16

This is on you and your partner. You need to be contactable or have someone who is.

Would he have gone for her if she was being taken to hospital?

gamerchick · 14/06/2021 10:19

@Excilente

Has the OP mentioned her being at work, or just that her phone was dead and she didnt get the message til she charged it?
I'm assuming husband knows where the OP works? He absolutely should have made the effort to get a message to her place of work when he couldn't reach her on her mobile. If he'd tried that is. Yanno, to check where his kid was and if she had been collected.
MyDcAreMarvel · 14/06/2021 10:19

@MrsSchadenfreude We moved house when ours were at primary school, but both worked 60+ miles away in London. We couldn’t have got back in under 2+ hours, knew no-one at school, and had no family living nearby. So until we had been there a few weeks and had made friends, school had no local contact for us. What were we supposed to do? one of you should have either looked for a job more locally or stopped work all together, or put you child in a school closer to work in a school with no catchment.

OhCrumbsWhereNow · 14/06/2021 10:20

@MrsSchadenfreude

I love the way that schools (and most people on here) assume that there will be a parent (usually the mother) on hand to drop everything and be at the school in minutes. We moved house when ours were at primary school, but both worked 60+ miles away in London. We couldn’t have got back in under 2+ hours, knew no-one at school, and had no family living nearby. So until we had been there a few weeks and had made friends, school had no local contact for us. What were we supposed to do? Also in this day and age, I doubt a family friend would want to collect a child who potentially had Covid.

And of course a member of staff should have brought the child some lunch!

Agree - we did the same and made the choice to keep DD at school in London so she commuted with us. Had she gone to the local school we had nobody we knew in the area who could have picked her up, and even in a dire emergency it would be best part of 2 hours for any of us to get there.

Not everyone has family or friends round the corner from them, and if you both work, how do you ever even meet other parents in your child's class?

MyDcAreMarvel · 14/06/2021 10:22

@Dolphin7 the issue is yourself not the school. It was incredibly irresponsible to not carry a battery charger when your disabled child is attending school during a pandemic.

ineedaholidaynow · 14/06/2021 10:23

If your child is at Primary School you would normally meet other parents through play dates/clubs/activities unless your child doesn’t participate in any of these.

Secondary School it is different.

Ritasueandbobtoo9 · 14/06/2021 10:24

I think people are a bit unrealistic to assume that there are people readily available to pick up at all times.

OhCrumbsWhereNow · 14/06/2021 10:24

[quote MyDcAreMarvel]**@MrsSchadenfreude* We moved house when ours were at primary school, but both worked 60+ miles away in London. We couldn’t have got back in under 2+ hours, knew no-one at school, and had no family living nearby. So until we had been there a few weeks and had made friends, school had no local contact for us. What were we supposed to do?* one of you should have either looked for a job more locally or stopped work all together, or put you child in a school closer to work in a school with no catchment.[/quote]
That's hilarious - unless you already have a place at a London primary school there is not a hope in hell of getting one from that far away. Have you any clue how oversubscribed they are?

Schools are perfectly capable of holding onto a child until normal pick up time and feeding them a meal.

Ritasueandbobtoo9 · 14/06/2021 10:25

My sister is a contact but lives about 2 hours away. There is no one else, everyone works.

Haymarket · 14/06/2021 10:25

I work in a school office, my guess is it was a simple oversight. Schools are very underfunded, understaffed and under pressure. Don't go in all guns blazing. No harm done. I'm sure they'll be genuinely sorry, I would be.

GonnaBeYoniThisChristmas · 14/06/2021 10:29

I think school is in the wrong here (as well as the OP and her husband).

There are urgent circs when a parent can’t pick up. However wrong the parent is / flimsy their excuse is (as in this case), the school cares for the child or hands on that care to someone else. They don’t just leave a child with no food.

I would not complain in this situation as I would feel mortified at my part in it but the parents being unavailable doesnt reduce schools duty to sort lunch.

Crazycrazylady · 14/06/2021 10:29

Of course they should have fed her but they probably assumed that you'd turn on your phone or you dh would contact someone and she'd be picked up any minute so she slipped through the cracks in the chaos of sending a class home.

I think you've lost all the moral high ground to complain though by a)you not being contactable and b) your dh's rather strange (shrugs) response .

GonnaBeYoniThisChristmas · 14/06/2021 10:30

And as Haymarket says, if you do raise it, I’m sure it will be a simple “so sorry, it was a manic day” and that’s all there is to it.