Working in a special school - should I be on light duties?

[jess21690]

Hi everyone, just looking for advice an reassurance really.
For context, I'm a teacher in a special school for children with social, emotional and mental health problems. I'm currently 23 weeks pregnant. I absolutely love my job, but obviously the nature of the children means that they can be violent and unpredictable. Normal ratios in our school is 3 adults in class who are trained in physical handling. When I came back to work in September I was given an 'extra' member of staff in class so there was still 3 adults who could physically intervene with the children. However, I was then later told by the deputy head (in front of a group of staff) that this extra staff member was a luxury that I couldn't rely on. At this point I had to contact my union and demand that this was written into my risk assessment. The extra ta was then swapped for an apprentice who was not trained in physical handling (although they are now).

I totally lost faith in the leadership team to look after me at that point, but the staff on the ground are fantastic and I love my job so I have stayed in class. But the bigger I get the more anxious I'm getting. I have regular nightmares about something happening to my baby at work. There have been a number of occasions over the last few weeks where fights have broken out in my room and I haven't been able to get out of the door. There's also been a number of occasions where I can't go down corridors because children are behaving violently - but what if I needed to go down that corridor to get away from an unsafe situation?! All I keep thinking is it only takes one incident to cause damage, even though the children are fantastic about it most of the time.
My midwife has said that if I'm not happy with my risk assessment to go to the gp and he will sign me off or recommend different duties. I just don't know if this is a reasonable thing to do or if I'm being overly anxious because I'm pregnant.

Any advice would be really welcome!

I'm in a different position: I'm a science technician in a comp (former teacher and am also teaching some lessons due to staff absence). I'm not sure where we stand on 'light duties' as I need them because of spd and just found out I'm severely anaemic. But my role doesn't involve light duties at all, so I can't just stick to them. Even printing stuff for other teachers isn't a light duty as the printer is 50m away and I can't really walk....

My husband is encouraging me to take early maternity leave (which does not make much financial difference to us), but I'm left with the sickening feeling of leaving people in a lurch.

Oh and I avoid moving in the corridors between lessons - it's in my risk assessment (which probably needs updating with spd info??).

Hi op I just wanted to say I work in a residential home for children with behaviour problems. And a lot of the time turn violent and have to be restrained. Your company should have a risk assessment in place so that I anything kicks of you are to leave and find a safe place whilst other members of staff deal with the situation. As this is what happens with me. I also have extra staff on shifts I am working as I am now not allowed to use restraints for my own safety. Could you not go to your hr department for advice at the end of the day things can be unpredictable and no 2 outbursts are the same. You have to put you and baby first.

37+2 here and haven't even seen a risk assessment. I am assuming they are just using a generic one, but nothing has been mentioned.
I am at a regular school but still being used for cover (three weeks in a row now), teaching nowhere near a toilet and up and down stairs many time a day. Don't even get me started on corridor congestion - it is terrifying!!!

I work in forensic mental health and fully understand the anxiety. Even on my relatively settled ward the clients can be unpredictable and situations often arise in open areas of the hospital too. When I was pregnant I was basically stuck in the office for the whole time. Risk assessments wete completed but they (rightfully) couldn't 100% guarantee my safety. I was given a choice to be signed off but this would have triggered my maternity leave earlier which I didn't want to do.

You really need to ask about a risk assessment. What does light duties look like at your school? Is it realistic that you could just be office based? If not then consider getting signed off. Just remember it's likely to affect your maternity leave.

@Mummykaz90 thank you for sharing your experience! That I would leave the room is the plan, but if something has kicked off often children are being moved by the door, also the corridor outside my classroom is often used as an overspill area for children who are struggling, so it can be unsafe for me to leave the room. I'm also worried that once I'm bigger and less mobile it's going to be harder for me to move out of the way of any incidents/flying chairs etc!!
I could discuss my concerns with leadership, but they have been so unhelpful so far I don't have any faith in them changing anything, if I wanted to add anything to my risk assessment I think it would have to be on doctors advice.

@FormerlyFrikadela01 thanks for your reply,its good to know how different professions have dealt with it. I could be office based helping out with admin/curriculum planning etc. Other staff within the academy have gone on to lighy duties when pregnant and done this sort of thing.
Because my class are relatively settled and don't tend to attack staff but are more prone to fighting with each other ( I also have really good relationships with them and taught some of them last year) I think leadership are just hoping I won't do this. However, there is no way anyone can say my safety is 100% guaranteed.
I think for me it's also getting harder as she's getting bigger, I can feel her wriggling around so much now, we're prepping the nursery - the stakes feel so much higher if that makes sense. My current feeling is that maybe I should go and see the doctor over the Christmas holidays.

Hi all. I am in a similar situation. I work for the NHS and I have to do oncall for any cardiac emergency. The oncall is a 24h shift mostly in a cardiac catheter lab, where I have to wear heavy lead aprons to protect myself from radiation. I am the first responder to resuscitation which often involve doing CPR whilst wearing heavy leads on. Apart from being very stressful and traumatic we often don’t know if the patient has any contagious diseases as it’s a life and death situation and no time for taking bloods for that. Not to mention many patient are overweight and it’s physically demanding to slide then onto the lab table. Sometimes patient die, which is always depressing and traumatic. This part of the job is bad enough when I am not pregnant, but now I am 12 weeks and the GP signed me on amended duties (I. e not wearing heavy leads) however my manager is putting pressure on me to still work in the lab and be oncall as we are short of staff. I am currently off sick with depression and PTSD, but am dreading going back to work. The culture in the NHS is very bad, you are just expected to grin and bear it. I am 40, have multiple fibroids, and it’s my first pregnancy. In June I had a miscarriage at 8 weeks. It happened so that few day before I had one of this horrid oncalls where I was in the lab for 17 hours straight. Am I out of line here thinking that work should let me be on amended duties: just run clinics for example? Or am I being a “baby”?
My manager hasn’t even done a risk assessment (3 months later)!
Thank you guys for listening to my rant.

@Bella245 that sounds awful!! You should definitely be on amended duties and if your manager won't support that, your doctor should definitely sign you off or say you are only fit for light duties. Your maternity leave will only be triggered 4 weeks before your due date if you are off sick so not that bad really.

Thank you worriedteacher 37. I plan to discuss it with GP before I return.
This seems to be the trend across other professions. How sad that society expects women to carry on with life as normal when pregnant, when there is a huge demand on the body and mind during pregnancy. And even after...