Welfare check after three day absence - is this normal?

[SnottyLittleMango]

Hi, I have no experience of this as DD8 has had 100 percent attendance for the last two years, but has had a really nasty virus this week and has been off since Tuesday. I've called the school each morning to let them know but we had a welfare officer turn up this morning asking to see her. No problem with that- she was sat on the sofa with DH both in PJs as he's also got the bug now, I was just surprised especially as he was a bit rude to DH, asking why he was dressed like that (in his PJs I assume) in a pretty snarky way. Is this normal for a three day absence from primary? No problems at all with the school.

This is lunacy, is this the norm now ? Nobody can enter your home without a warrant. I'd have told them to piss off. This has absolutely over stepped the mark surely. They aren't social services and even social services can't enter without a warrant

Interestingly, we did have a massive problem with bullying!

I work in a school and this is standard practice. They are following government guidelines.

It’s done to check on student welfare, someone has to have ‘seen’ the child if they’re absent.

It must be to do with historic cases of child abuse where children were in danger and no one knew etc. You have to bear in mind that there will be some instances where children aren’t cared for properly and schools have a responsibility.

I wouldn’t worry about it, they have to document the visit and they’ll have made a note that everything is ok.

But surely you know they cannot just expect entry into a person's home without a warrant on an assumption. The human rights act is there to prevent ridiculous overstepping and invasion of privacy such as this .

No our school would never invade privacy. I was just saying it’s pretty standard for a visit on day 3.

I agree. We have have chicken pox running rampant through our Reception year at the moment. You really think it makes any sense to do a home visit for all of those children after day 3?! Our DSL would never be in school in the mornings, they'd always be out on visits.

Any good school knows their families well. If you're going to take a blanket decision to send someone to check on EVERY child after 3 days despite parents ringing in each day then I'd assume that that school really does not know its families.

I think some people forget that in these cases which make the news, there usually WERE signs that things were amiss. Often school staff raised concerns regularly, and information was either not shared correctly or not acted upon properly by other agencies.

I've lost count of the amount of times we have had our phone calls ignored by social services, or they've said they could not send anyone out to someone's home and to call police instead (only for the police to say it didn't meet the threshold for a welfare check). This has happened when our DSL have visited homes and seen a child alone at home, with no parent answering the door or phone.

Schools should not have to implement ridiculously OTT attendance procedures because social services are too stretched to do their part . As others have pointed out, we have 6 weeks holiday in the summer, 2 at Christmas and Easter, other half terms. All over 3 days. Who is looking after the welfare of all those children then? It's absolutely ludicrous.

Very unusual for a family with no social involvement. One of my dc was off for a week with a virus and didn't get a welfare check. I've never heard of that before.

I agree
unless they have safeguarding concerns it’s an absolute waste of resources in schools where they are so short staffed.
id be asking to see the policy to support this as 3 days is ridiculous.

I don't believe a welfare officer would be classed as a 'professional'

They are not registered. They do not have to have specialist qualifications in order to do the job and they do not have a specific knowledge base.

They have no right to enter a private family home.

There is massive overreach in schools today that has been noted on this thread.

Some school policies need to be legally challenged as they infringe on Article 8 - respect for private and family life.
www.equalityhumanrights.com/human-rights/human-rights-act/article-8-respect-your-private-and-family-life

Schools often demand things they have no right to - such as medical 'proof' for minor sickness absences (this should only be in extraordinary circumstances and they should be flexible as to what is proof)

Schools overreach on social transitioning without parental involvement, on deciding what children are allowed to eat, on trying to dictate when children come to school when unwell.

Safeguarding is currently being used as an excuse for government interference in family life.

My job is basically making visits like this. Ive only ever commented on pjs when its been a family I have a good relationship with i visit every week and it might be a joke comment about the football team they were wearing. Totally inappropriate in your circumstances.

This is standard practice in my school. It is called “sighting the child” and would be done in most cases after 3 days’ absence. It’s a safeguarding thing after all the dreadful cases there have been in the press where agencies missed opportunities to spot when things were wrong.

How does going to someone’s home check that they are not on holiday?

So who is checking on every child who hasn’t reached school age yet, every 3 days? Who is checking on every child that is homeschooled every 3 days? Who is checking on every single child in the country every 3 days during the school holidays? Who was checking on all children every 3 days during Covid when no one was attending school?

Why is it only a safeguarding concern when it affects a schools absence stats?

Absolutely ridiculous. See my previous post. Why is no one arsed about kids being “sighted” during the holidays? 🤨

Because it’s better to do something when circumstances permit, than nothing at all because you can’t achieve perfection?

Sighting the child is a grammatical horror. What’s wrong with seeing the child?

When there are already safeguarding concerns absolutely! But not in the case of the OP!

Well because there would be signs some one is home…

So what does your school do over the holidays then? Because the holidays last longer than 3 days . Its a massive over reach of power and should not be allowed. No rights to this whatsoever

If they are there they are not on holiday.

if they are not there then you investigate further. If a primary child is off school sick then there are not many reasons to leave the house.

Closed curtains, everyone in their bedrooms and not answering the door to cold callers isn’t exactly uncommon when there is sickness in the house. And besides, you think that if no one is home, they must be on holiday and not, say, at work with the kids at the grandparents’?

Well they could be at the doctor’s! But I spent all my sick days at my grandparents’ or a neighbour’s so my mum could work.

What the post meant was does the school have an issue with the attendance of other kids, eg have they got a large sector of kids that frequently don't turn up to school.

The kids aren't meant to be in school during school holidays though.
For all it's shocking that these checks happen, it's more shocking that it's got to this because there are so many slob parents not getting out of bed in a morning and getting their kids to school! There was a statistic that 1 in every 5 kids is largely absent from school.

Only about 1 in 50 pupils goes in less than half the time.

The 1 in 5 figure is any pupil who misses 19+ days of school in a 190 day year.