teaching parent dilemma

[illtrythis]

My husband is a teacher at my daughter's secondary school (she is in 1st year). We have come up against a dilemma. While we always encourage talking about problems and worries and want to keep our lines of communication as open as possible with our daughter, we are also aware that she may find it more difficult to speak to us about any concerns she might have about any of her friends, due to the duty of care that my husband has as a teacher.

The situation has come about because tonight she mentioned that a couple of her friends had confided to her (individually) that they had recently self-harmed. She says that she is pretty sure the school is aware and that they are ok now. Husband naturally feels duty-bound to report this but our daughter is desperate for him not to as she will have betrayed their trust. We are glad that she felt able to speak to us about this but are worried that she may never confide in us again, depending on how the school handles it.

How do any fellow teachers out there manage this dual role - of teacher and parent? Any advice very welcome.

I'd advise your DD to encourage her friend to tell an adult herself.

I agree. Everything I've read suggests it is far better if the young person makes the initial approach, rather than being approached by someone acting on a report from someone else.

The Camelot Foundation have produced a document, "The truth about self-harm", which is available online, and this link might help:
www.selfharmuk.org

I believe you a parent first and Formosa therefore that takes priority, what is told to you in your home is not part of the job that you might do, however sometimes you are told things that you feel has to be passed on whatever job you might do.

I suppose you'd just have to think about what you'd say to the parents if one of the girls killed herself and you knew she was at risk but said nothing.

I'm afraid I agree Rhonda. What happens if self-harm becomes suicide? It's not an enormous leap, is it? And your husband didn't say anything. There are surely channels which will allow complete anonymity? The school will have a staff member who leads safeguarding (not smug, absolutely necessary) who could advise but how would you feel if this were your daughter self-harming and adults knew but did nothing.

On a separate note, my mum was our head teacher. It was awful, took all the not out of school for us so kudos to your husband for retaining such a good relationship with your daughter.

Self harm is fairly common among teens as a coping mechanism.

Many grow out of it - it is not to be confused with suicide attempts. They are totally different things.

lotus

In all the safeguarding training I deliver in my school, I explain that if a member of staff has concerns about the safety and welfare of a child they should be reported to the designated safeguarding lead in the school. It is not up to the staff member to decide whether the concerns are serious or true or whether they might lead to anything else. Their job is simply to pass the information on.

OP, your DH might want to explain his safeguarding responsibilities to your DD so she understands that as a teacher he is obliged to report what she told him. He could ask her if she'd prefer to report it in confidence herself and he could help her to do that. He could also suggest that in future she reports any concerns to her HoY or even her form tutor. The problem here is that if she shares at home any concerns about children at school, it stops being a family issue and becomes a school issue and that's when your DH's duty of care kicks in.

I work in a school and my children are pupils , there are quite a few apoplectic in this situation at the school and in all the safeguarding training it is made clear that if our child discloses something to us we need to report .This hasn't happened to me but it has to a friend and the school were very discrete.This is unfortunately one of the difficulties in having your own children at your school.

I think there is a difference when an issue is mentioned within a home, safeguarding seems a catch-all term so judgment always comes into it. Interestingly when a child is at home and mentions something very serious is a parent no matter what their job wherever they are there would be a moral obligation to report

It has to be passed on. If it became a suicide I could never forgive myself for not passing on the information. If a child's safety is in question no teacher should be keeping secrets. In fact IMO no adult should be. Every time a child dies and there is a serious case review it turns out lots of people had suspicions or information that they didn't pass on. Because they used their own judgement, decided that it probably wasn't that serious or that it might be awkward to report or that other people were already dealing with it. 9/10 times people are right about those things, but if you aren't and it is that serious and isn't being dealt with them the consequences for the child can be very serious. I wouldn't lie to your daughter. If it were I'd sit down with her, tell her that it had been playing on my mind, that I was worried about her friend and that I needed to check that her friend was being dealt with at school and getting help that she needs.

I'm

What happens if self-harm becomes suicide? It's not an enormous leap, is it?

It's an immense leap, and I'm sorry to say that you are just engaging in scaremongering.

The raw statistics are here, at Appendix 1 on page 28.

Firstly, it's worth noting that suicide is hugely more common amongst boys than girls. As self-harm appears (statistics are hard to come by, but I doubt any will argue this point) to be far more common amongst girls, claiming an association is always going to be tricky.

Secondly, rates of teenage suicide are low. Every one is a tragedy, but it's 60, 36, 31 in 2011, 12, 13. That's a rate of 3.1, 1.9., 1.6 per 100 000 for those years. Converted to percentages, it means 0.003% per year. It means a very large mixed comprehensive school of 2000 pupils might expect of the order of three suicides amongst girls per century, or one every thirty years (these are necessarily vague numbers, as we are talking about huge variability).

Self harm rates are incredibly hard to establish, but let's be conservative and say that 5% of girls might be self-harming in a sustained and systematic way which is evidence of continued distress, rather than occasional experimentation or one-off events.

That would be 5000 per 100 000 self harming, 3 killing themselves, so a ratio of about one suicide per 1600 self-harming.

In fact, the ratio for a school will be higher than that, as suicide is distressingly common amongst young undergraduates and people leaving home for the first time, so the statistics broken down into 15-19 includes a lot of people who aren't at school. In the case of the OP, suicide amongst 12 year olds is extremely rare, in large part because of lack of means: I don't have numbers to hand, but if is significantly less than 1 per 100 000.

Yes, I'm sure you'll say "but it's too many!" and I'd agree. But interventions for "suicide prevention" are hardly risk-free, and parents are (as I'm sure you realise) not all sugar and spice. If you intervene in 1500 girls' lives fearing suicide, when only one of them was at risk, it would be a miracle of global proportions for that intervention to not have side-effects, negative side-effects, for at least one of the 1499 girls who were not going to commit suicide anyway. Screening and prediction is hard.

Children who are self-harming are self-harming, and that is of itself risky behaviour. It is evidence of mental distress, and that should trigger help and support. But suicide? At these sorts of risk ratios, a practitioner would have to be very confident of their ground before they started assuming that a child who was self-harming was a suicide risk.

Secondly, rates of teenage suicide are low. Every one is a tragedy, but it's 60, 36, 31 in 2011, 12, 13. That's a rate of 3.1, 1.9., 1.6 per 100 000 for those years.

Those figures are for girls. For boys, for comparison, the rates are between 3x and 5x higher.

And that's why time after time we wring our hands at serious case reviews finding a lack of information sharing. People know that most of the time it is not that serious and is unlikely to become a suicide and so they don't make a fuss or pass on the information but sometimes it is. Sometimes that student who just seems a bit odd and is suspected to self-harm then suddenly throws themselves under a train (happened with a child at my school, not a hypothetical ) with seemingly no warning.

neck, interesting though those statistics are, they will cut no ice if the child is seriously harmed and a serious case review is carried out.

As a pp has said, the findings of most SCRs, including the one I was part of two years ago, nearly always include poor information sharing. I cannot imagine the fallout in the OP's situation if one of the children killed themselves and the OP's DH reported to the SCR that his wife read up on some suicide statistics on Mumsnet and so he made the unilateral decision to ignore his obligation to report his concerns with the school.

And just to clarify, the term "safeguarding" is not a "catch-all" term. In a school setting it has a very specific meaning and covers child protection, safer recruiting, whistle-blowing and staff codes of conduct to name just a few areas.

but sometimes it is

But usually it isn't. It's easy retrospectively to say "we should have known", but given CAMHS are sinking under the load already, reporting ~20% of girls in a secondary school to them (what do you think should happen: detailed investigation into each case?) without there being additional grounds for concern is simply impractical. Similarly, if you biopsy every suspicious lump and bump, it's not at all obvious that the harm outweighs the good, even leaving aside the issue of cost.

Are you suggesting a CAHMS referral for every child who "seems a bit odd and is suspected to self-harm"? How long do you think the waiting list would be? Do you think CAMHS referrals are themselves harmless? Why not just report every child who "seems a bit odd" and not wait for the self-harm?

his obligation to report his concerns with the school.

He doesn't have concerns. His daughter has concerns. His daughter does not have a reporting obligation (teachers don't, in statute, but we will pass over that). The result of this will be that next time the daughter will keep her mouth shut, even for something which is more directly and obviously dangerous. She will also learn to keep her mouth shut about her own behaviour. Presumably, by your logic, if she herself self-harms and/or engages in risky sexual or other behaviour, her father will have to immediately report it to the school as she is a pupil and he is a teacher and that is the end of it? Is it really the case that parents who have children at the school at which they work report all potentially risky behaviour by their own child to the headmaster? Wow.

If your post is to me, neck, no, I haven't mentioned CAMHS. That was you.

I've talked about the school's system for reporting concerns about a child. Some way from a referral to CAMHS.

To clarify, in our school we have specific forms for recording concerns about children. Staff discuss their concerns with one of the three designated safeguarding leads and then, if necessary, complete one of the forms. These are discussed by the DSLs and a course of action is determined. Often the decision is made to monitor the situation and no further action is taken. The written record is very useful for building a picture from something that may seem innocuous at first.

The OP's DH may well feel that self-harm is not a concern. The OP hasn't said either way. But it is risky behaviour and he will know from his safeguarding training that it is information that should be shared, as evidenced by the OP's use of the phrase "duty of care". The knowledge that he needs to share the information is clearly not what he's struggling with. It's the fact that his daughter doesn't want him to.

Solicitors have an ethics line they can call if they have concerns about what course of action to take. Is there anything for teachers? I think your DH would be better calling that than consulting people on MN who are (for the most part) not teachers.

name

Have a look at my posts - all schools in the UK should have a written safeguarding and child protection policy, and at least two members of staff who are designated safeguarding leads (I am one). These are the people you share concerns with. The advantage is they are on site - no need to phone anyone in the first instance (unless you don't think the DSL has dealt with your concern correctly).

I wouldn't report to CAMHS but to the person that my school's policy designates. This would be the HOY in my school for an issue like self-harm. The HOY might decide to report to CAMHS if they have a number of concerning reports from staff that when taken together suggest the child needs to be referred. If staff aren't all passing on their concerns then they can't make informed decisions about whether to refer. They have to be able to build up a picture of that child's needs and they can only do that if staff share concerns with them.

I wouldn't report to CAMHS but to the person that my school's policy designates.

Would you report your own child?

I don't think the word "report" is helpful here. Sharing information underpins all safeguarding practice in school and this is what we're talking about here. No-one is being reported.

I know you didn't ask that question of me, but yes, I definitely would definitely speak to the DSL at my children's school if either of them were self-harming.

Yes. Even parents who don't work at the school often call in to let the HOY know that they are concerned about these sorts of things so that the school can keep an eye on them and be aware in case there might be bullying etc.

Even parents who don't work at the school often call in to let the HOY know that they are concerned

Of course. But they aren't obligated to do so, and I bet they think "will my child's welfare be improved or harmed by this". The claim's being made that for the particular case of a child whose parent is a teacher at their school, they have no discretion. So if their child goes to a party and comes home a bit tipsy, then on Monday morning they're on the phone to their child's school reporting it, with no discretion in the matter. If so, the wise parent will have nothing to do with such children, and will advise their own children likewise. If teachers really behave like that, then I refer them to the German phrase vorauseilender Gehorsam.