Legal advice needed (urgent)

[kikmoo2]

On Monday I took an over dose due to a breakdown in my marriage. I am a teacher and son attends the school I teach in. My family support worker wants me to tell the school what happened so they can look out for my son. I do not feel comfortable in the school knowing what I did as I feel it may jeopardise my role as a teacher. I tried to phone my union for advice on this but due to corona they are only communicating by e-mail and responses can take up to 3 days.
Does anyone have any advice on this please?

Do not tell them. Ever.

Phone in sick.

Who is your union?

I know of no union ever who does not answer the phone.

I'm bailing.

It's NEU, they say on their site they will only deal with e-mail enquiries during this time

Unfortunately all NEU offices are closed and we are not currently able to keep our phone lines open – please accept our apologies for this inconvenience. You can login to myNEU to update your details online. If you have a query, use one of the contact forms below to send us a message and we will do our best to respond when we can.

Phone in sick for now. Rightly or wrongly I have always given a physical reason for days off for mental health reasons. You are no doubt physically unwell right now so tell them your physical symptoms if quizzed. Discuss with the NEU rep when they get back to you.

Get a sicknote that states 'personal stress and anxiety' and hand it in to your HT. They will want to arrange an OH appointment but that will obviously be by telephone at the moment. They will also want to talk to you to see if they can offer anything additional. You could mention your break-up without mentioning your overdose.
Social Care may contact the school if there are wellbeing concerns for your son so they may find out that way.
Be kind to yourself. Everybody goes through times when they need support with mental health. As an ex-HT myself, I would only want to support you with this and would only want you back when you are fighting fit but I wouldn't judge you for it or question your ability to teach. I hope your HT feels the same way- there but for the grace of God go anyone of us!

Thanks for all your replies x

@echt

Who is your union?

I know of no union ever who does not answer the phone.

CWU went completely AWOL for over a week when my husband needed them over Covid19 absence disciplinary.

Do NOT mention overdose, it will haunt you forever. Get time off for stress from GP and tell school about marriage breakdown and that everyone is in an extremely fragile state. They don't need any further details (unless your son found you or witnessed the medical aftermath, in which case he's likely to say something and also likely to need a far greater level of support than if he just knows you're "sad." That is far trickier in terms of what's best.)