Bullying/Harassment of staff by parents- do you have a policy?

[finleysmaid]

Which questions do you ask, Finleysmaid, and what would you do if you were given information which made you realise that the child would need more support than other children - that you would need more staff that you usually have?

Sorry this was badly worded...what i mean is that when children start we talk to the parents...this conversation often brings up information that has not been revealed earlier. I have never and would never refuse a child...our attitude is to include everyone...it is our responsibility to make it work. We currently have a little boy with us who has an extremely rare medical condition...he was refused a place in several nurseries before he started with us <_< this sort of attitude makes me cross.

Parents being rude however is unacceptable!

[woodlands1997]

It's very rare here too, that is the only child we have ever managed to get a statement for. I am not saying we would have said they couldn't have stayed if we didn't receive funding but it would have cost us nearly £200 a week to pay the 1:1 so we would have had to do some serious planning and juggling to even consider being able to afford it!! I know that's not fair but it is how it was, we very much felt that it was cost that was driving them to want them in the other school x

[Wildflowers]

I have written a policy draft, based on yours, Woodlands. (Thanks!)

I added abusive behaviour towards other parents and children, not only to us staff.

I changed the part about making it clear to the aggressive parent that we don't tolerate such behaviour because I'm not sure that it would have a calming effect. Possibly openness to listen would help. I don't know... (I have been in a challenging situation with a parent where I felt physically cornered and was questioned. I was unprepared for this and became defensive because I felt that the parent was unreasonable and unfair. That didn't help. Upset people don't want to hear, they just want to be heard.)

Thinking about it I see that a policy on harassment must be linked to the complaints procedure, though the parent may be unwilling to go through its various steps.

The "disrespectful behaviour" which may lead to exclusion of the adult, and possibly child as a consequence, and no refund of fees paid, may need to be defined. Or is the manager "reserves the right" enough, legally? (Payment for the notice period would obviously not be asked for or given.)

Adult Behaviour Management Policy

We will not tolerate that any adult speaks in an abusive of threatening manner to us or any other adult or child at [the setting]. In the unlikely event that an adult speaks or acts aggressively whilst with us, we will:

• if possible direct them away from the children and other parents, together with another adult, if available, whilst ensuring that the children are appropriately supervised

• encourage them be calm by expressing willingness to hear what they have to say

• listen to their concerns and suggest that they, if dissatisfied with our response, put their concerns in writing for [the manager] to follow our complaints procedure

An incident record form will be completed detailing the time, reason and action taken.

A parent or carer who has behaved or spoken disrespectfully is not welcome to [the setting]. [The manager] reserves the right to terminate a child's place with us, unless it is agreed that the child is brought and collected by another person. There will be no refund of any fees paid.

Edited May 11, 2014 by Wildflowers

[Guest]

Hi Sorry to hear that you have been having a tough time. Strange thing is I was checking the boards last week as am having the exact same problem. This has been going on for 3 terms now everytime I have to issue a new invoice. However this time 2 other parents asked about my wellbeing after the confrontation, which let me know that I really had allowed this particular parents behaviour to get out of hand. So first of all I put up a Polite Notice to parents explaining that an incident had happened that was unacceptable and therefore after 10 years trading we were going to ask for an emergency parent group meeting to discuss and write a new 'Adult Behaviour Policy' which is exactly what we did togther with 5 parents, myself and business partner we all put together a new 'Policy' which I then put up and asked every parent to read and sign it. Amazingly the parent involved signed it but asked for a copy. I have to say I was very surprised that she did sign. I am still waiting for a call from Ofsted as she was too smug the following day after the notice went up. I have to say that the parent group were brilliant and the terms of the policy were possibly a little more tough than I would have been. That said the final draft reads well and I am now making it be an addition of our registration forms. Parents suggested this at first I said would this not alarm parents into thinking we have had lots of trouble? Their reply was 'no it shows that we are protecting children, staff and other parents from inappropriate behaviour'.

Anyway I know exactly how you feel and offer my sympathy's. This last week has caused me endless restless night's sleep in fact many nights of hardly any sleep, so i really do understand your stress levels. I do hope that you can create a new policy that will send a clear zero tollerance of unacceptable behavioiur to your horrid parents. i hope you can take comfort like I have in knowing that we aren't the only ones that this is happening to. Also for me as soon as the polite notice went up i was overwhelmed with the positive response from every single other parent at our nursery they all could not believe that anyone would treat any member of our staff disrespectfully, aggressively or inappropriately. This went a long way to making my week a lot better than it started. :-)

[ForestFlo]

Hi all,

Thank you all for your support and suggestions- it has been so very helpful and reassuring.

Ofsted, the LA and Social Services are all very aware of the situation, in fact our Area SENCO and SEBD liaison worker were both present at one of the incidents.

I returned to work yesterday on a flexible basis, this whole situation has really taken its toll on me as its been brewing for a long time, alongside the death of a colleague it just really was too much. However said parents had started telling others they had had me suspended so that was enough motivation to prompt me to return.

Even though the parents clearly do not trust us - they trust us enough to continue to send their children to the setting everyday.

On the subject of the child with the behaviour issues - I would never have excluded him, he is 4, still a baby in my eyes and has suffered such trauma in the early part of his life. We have seen improvement with the steps we have put in place (although it has its ups and downs). I firmly believe that he needs unconditional love, boundaries and stability, something he has never had before. Exclusion is always the very last resort in schools and having spoken to our SEBD team they would not have supported exclusion of this child.

We have drafted a parent code of conduct policy to protect us from this sort of incident in the future - this is being signed off by the committee today and was part of my insistence that it must happen before I return. Once we have the final draft will happily share. I would urge anyone who doesn't have such a thing in place to seriously consider adopting something - as ever its one of those things that you only realise you need when its too late and something awful has already happened.

 

Thank you all for your support

FF

[HappyMaz]

Hope your return to work is uneventful Flo, and that you're getting the support you need. What a horrible thing to have to go through.