Child had 11 days off sick for mumps from school and now im being sent an education welfare officer to explain attendance???

[honestyismybond1]

Child is at a good primary school who I have had an excellent relationship with.My childs last year attendance was 90%.This year we aimed for 100% but sadly caught mumps and was very ill off sick for 11 days.Child saw GP on first day of absence who confirmed mumps and school was notified on day one by myself.I called the school many times updating them and requesting missed work to keep up.My child loged into school website everyday for 2hours to complete math work to keep up but sadly requested work from school did not come.When child went back to school I let teacher know how hard child worked at home even though very poorly and all seemed fine.Two weeks later got a school letter saying being moniterd by educational welfare officer for poor attendance and any future absences will be marked unauthorised unless I get a doctors note even if its a 24 hour bug or cold.So when my child was ill yet again a week later for a tummy bug just for a day I took my child to see GP to get a note and showed her the letter and the Dr went mental but to my shock not towards the school but to me.Gp requested I pay £20 for letter or go! When I said I could not pay £20 Gp said was putting on my record that I am always to pay £20 if I want any information to stop me wasting her time.I felt sick and very upset.I pointed out to her that we were both on the same side and that it was the council,education board,school demanding this and if we both complained in some way it would help.I then dared to ask if this was fair and was clearly told what she thought did not come into this and she will only take the course of action of asking for £20 to stop it happening.So the parent gets blamed from all angles and the child gets unauthorised mark on school record!When I calmed down I rang eductation board who was delighted with the action my school had taken and even said to me "we have vast matters in this area and if a child is ever ill more than once a year then this needs investigating" who the hell has a child who is sick only once a year? If you do please clone them because this is not the norm.I am worn out with this so can anyone please share what they think and what they would do? Thanl you

"The GP was probably annoyed as Mumps is a completely avoidable illness"

Gosh, you have faith in vaccination, don't you? Many people do not get adequate immunity from vaccination. Vaccination works on a "herd immunity" principle- vaccinate everybody and there's much less chance of those people who are resistant to immunisation or cannot be immunised for any reason from catching it.

Another point is that when my child was ill he was usually too ill to walk to the bus stop to go to the doctors. I just don't see how it can work.

And DD'2 teacher has probably had an attendance record below 80% this last half term as well! She is very enthusiastic and motivated so is certainly not shirking. There are a lot of nasty bugs going around.

Fairisleknitter , GP refuses to give a sick note and has advised that the school rings the surgery to confirm child's absence. School has accepted this approach. DS usually has tonsillitis at this time of the year every year

My son had recurring tonsillitis and usually he was flat on his bed and it was only one rare occasion when he picked up quickly that I got him to the doctors with symptoms to allow me to ask about tonsillectomy. I'd not drag a delirious or very poorly child to a GP's surgery and I'm sure they wouldn't want to do a home visit!

kesstrel my DC had MMR when it first came out, before the controversy and when there was high take up, so it isn't as cut and dried as all that.

Fair enough for GPs to be annoyed, both at the probably-preventable outbreaks, and certainly at the LEA policy requiring GPs to expose their other patients, themselves and other staff to illnesses where there is no benefit to the patient! GPs: write to your LEAs and local schools. Please write to your MPs. NHS managers: please get a health economist to estimate the total costs of these unnecessary letters, factoring in exposure of staff and vulnerable patients to colds, flus, d&v etc, and publicise it!

Has anyone successfully managed to get the school to pay the doctor's letter?

I hate to think what DD's attendance is. She's had a couple of weeks with viruses - one diarrhoea, one perforated eardrum/temp/sickness/vile bug - and also 4 weeks for an op, as well as returning part time after her op.

Probably 50 percent or so.

The issue is not to do with schools understanding that children get sick and being more understanding though, is it? I am sure they would be if they were certain it was a real period of sickness. It is to do with the clamp down on unauthorised absence. Schools aren't allowing at all it in many cases these days and unfortunately, without a sick note the school doesn't know for sure whether a child is sick or has been taken away on holiday or whatever. 12 days is a suspiciously long time for a child to take off without a sick note from the school's point of view.

I actually don't think the OP did herself any favours by getting her DD to go on the school website or by asking for homework, (although arguably she was doing a favour to her daughter) because that is exactly what parents promise they will do when they ask to take their children out of school in term time. Very ill children don't do school work. The OP knows her DD was ill but the school don't know that for sure and as somebody down the thread said, they have to be seen to be taking the unauthorised absences seriously and to be looking into all cases where absence drops below 94% or whatever the threshold is this week.

The doctor going mental was not helpful but perhaps they had had one too many timewasters that day. You should have phoned first and saved yourself a row. You didn't need to take your child in to see the GP especially with something so contagious as a tummy bug. I bet that really upset them too.

Bertha our schools locally accept a parent's word that their child is ill.

The issue is whether it is remotely sensible , in order to clampdown on a perceived issue of parents lying, that some schools now insist on a doctor's note, for things like D & V.

don't even get me started. it's a catch 22. they want proof, doc won't give it, or charges.

ewo here asks for proof of appt being kept, as she knows gp's don't wish to get involved nor have the time to write notes. ok you still have to go to the doctor, but get an appointment card, filled in by receptionist, and sighned.
photocopy and send to school. it at least shows you are trying to communicate.

workwise, in primary school, i begged for work to be sent home when dd had a severe hip prob. they never did, saying i would be interferring with the methods they use (maths). then had a go at me for her being behind and not filling her full potential.

i have considered home schooling, but she adores school. they just make her feel like shit for being ill, even with backed up info and specialists involved.

x

oh, and dd is now at secondary, and i had a meeting last week about her health, For the first time i heard the word 'Ofsted' in a sentence with 'won't like it on their records'

tick box here.

You have to see it from the school's point of view. The child has over 2 weeks off. They don't know that the child is really ill as they only have the mother's word for it. In the good old days that would be enough but they can't allow unauthorised absence and 2 weeks is a long time to be off. Plenty of people aren't asking for unauthorised absence any more because they won't get it and some are taking their children out anyway. How do they know the OP isn't one of those? If the school don't appear to come down hard on everybody, parents may not take them seriously.

It isn't the best way of fostering good relations with parents but some parents do take the piss and schools are being put under such pressure they have to be seen to act. No it isn't good that the school want a sick note for D&V but by insisting on it, they are making life harder for those who don't care about unauthorised absence. Unfortunately, with the OP, they just don't know for sure, do they? She would have been better off getting a sick note for the mumps and she would probably have avoided this but hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn't it?

The OP is stuck between a rock and a hard place really.

A school ought not to be assuming all parents are lying. It's a sure fire way to alienate people.

Their insistence on doctor's notes is not practically possible or desirable from a community health point of view.

The schools are being unreasonable and if they need to clamp down on truancy they need a different approach.

The mumps element of the MMR is about 80% effective (as opposed to 95+% for the measles and rubella elements). So although the more parents immunise the less mumps there is going around, quite possible for individual kids to have had MMR and still get mumps.

The local Health Protection Team at Public Health England would (should!) have been notified of the diagnosis - did you get a swab kit to do at home to confirm it? They won't necessarily have contacted the school though, unless there were a few cases linked to the same school.

If there's any doubt about the mumps diagnosis or if it helps your case, the Health Protection Team should be able to confirm if the school/EWO contacts them with your consent.

Hope that helps.

DD goes to a state steiner school, where many children are not vaccinated, and we were sent a table of recommended absence time for childhood illnesses:

CHILDHOOD ILLNESS
INCUBATION AND INFECTIOUS PERIOD/AFTER CARE
MEASLES
Incubation - 8-15 days. Infectious - 9 days before rash; 4 days after rash./
2 weeks rest.

CHICKEN POX
Incubation - 7-21 days.
Infectious - 2 days before rash; 7 days after rash, until last blister has scabbed./2 weeks rest

MUMPS

Incubation - 12-26 days Infectious 9 days from onset of swelling./2 weeks.

WHOOPING COUGH

Incubation period 7-15 days Infectious for 2-4 weeks/2-4 weeks.

SCARLET FEVER
1-3 days incubation 21 days infectious. Unwell for 4-7 days./3 weeks convalescence. Should be checked by Doctor before return.

GERMAN MEASLES (Rubella)
14-21 days incubation. Infectious 4 days after/1 weeks rest.
NB Keep away from expectant mothers at onset of rash.

VOMITING AND DIARRHOEA
Please keep your child at home for 24-hours after any illness that induces vomiting or diarrhoea.

There are I believe statutory absence times- so 11 days would be a bare minimum absence length for mumps, however and for whatever reason the DC caught it.

NB: DD's school has since extended the D&V guidelines to 48 hours in line with most other schools.

I would not be taking my child to Gp if he was too ill for school but didn't need a docs appointment..

Chicken pox went through my son's year last year ( he had it previously) about 3/4 of the class were off for over a week. ) so sure attendance for his year was very low before you start building in the usual D&V bugs etc...

I would certainly arrange a meeting with someone either school or EWO..I would also put in letter of complaint to practise manager... I am sure the GP had better things to do than see kids with nothing that needs to see a doctor.

I was told to take two weeks of university with chicken pox. I didn't I took the absolute minimum of all the spots scanning over because I was in the middle of my final year project.

I was also very lucky, by the time the spots appeared I felt better.

Infections effect different people differently. I learnt to roller skate while I had mumps, DF got it twice and was really ill both times.

Hi Everyone. Just looked at the official Mumps confirmed illnesses in 2011. It was 273, and nearly all of these were in an older group of people for whom no MMR was available. (Ie it is no longer a childhood illness). Most people reporting Mumps, actually did not have it. The confirmed Mumps figures are reducing year on year. So, was this mumps? Probably swollen glands. This is probably why there has been a bit of a fuss. 90% attendance would start to trigger a reaction from the school if they felt an absence was over long.

Yes, some children are ill quite a lot with recurring problems but Mumps is not one of them.

Or maybe, Milly, GPs are not able to/ refusing to diagnose mumps just as they have been in the early stages of the smaller measles outbreaks, and as they fairly often fail to do with whooping cough. Especially in vaccinated people these diseases can present atypically.

Duchesse why on earth do Steiner schools have large numbers of parents who don't vaccinate.
This is entirely crazy!
Do they also give recommended absences for diphtheria, tetanus, polio, epiglottitis, meningococcal disease, pneumococcal meningitis and other 'mild' childhood illnesses.
I actually think the media has a huge amount to answer for here whipping up whole MMR frenzy in the late 90's and we've still not fully recovered from it.
Smallpox...a killer disease, eradicated by a successful global vaccination programme to the extent that we now no longer need to vaccinate children against.
15 years ago, when I started my career, I used to regularly attempt to resuscitate children in this country suffering from meningococcal disease, many of whom died or were left with significant disability. We started vaccinating against meningitis C and now this only happens once or twice a year as a result of the B strain, for which a vaccine will soon be available and hopefully we can consign another dreadful disease to history.
It is the same story with the Haemophilus (HiB vaccine) that prevents epiglottitis, and a devastating form of meningitis and the pneumococcal vaccine that prevents pneumococcal sepsis, meningitis amongst others.
Measles is not a mild childhood illness that only kills children in 3rd world countries. In fact if a child is only mildly unwell they probably don't have measles. The death rate from measles in developed western countries is around 3/1000 cases. This means if every child in say 2.5 average sized, double intake primary school of 400 children got measles, 3 would die. It is a thoroughly nasty illness which I would not wish on my children in a million years.
Bottom line MMR does not cause autism. I would not put my children at any unnecessary risk and therefore they are fully vaccinated. I think you would struggle to find a paediatrician that does not ensure their own children are fully vaccinated.
Vaccines are there for a reason. If you could go back 50-60 years and be a parent then when these illnesses were really out there most people refusing vaccination now would have done ANYTHING to get their children protected against these truly devastating conditions..

Sorry it's a bit off topic OP and fully sympathise with your own situation.

er, right Abby, thanks for that. I had no idea.