Absent children

[Sarah_Church]

Hi everyone,

 

We are considering other ways in which we safeguard children who attend our setting. Currently, if a child does not turn up for a booked session we would not contact the parents that day, however, if they missed a few sessions we would contact the parents to check in and see if everything is okay. We do not have a time limit or set sessions missed on this though and it is not currently in any of our policies. So can I ask, does anyone have anything like this in place? And what is the time frame you give? If anyone would be happy to share their policy on the subject I would be very grateful.

 

Thanks

Sarah

[narnia]

I expect parents to make contact as soon as possible on the first day of absence.

[Mouseketeer]

I don't have a policy (but may add it in to safeguarding as a paragraph) but I have just added to the prospectus that if we expect a phone call or text to inform us the morning that a child will be absent and that if we haven't heard from them if a child doesn't arrive for their 2nd session we will contact them.

[louby loo]

Third missed session for us. We do expect parents to tell us though, and most do.

 

One thing that really helped us about being told about 'odd' days off when parents just went out for days etc - was to emphasise this helped us to plan sessions, be able to offer emergency sessions, walks to the park etc. I think many parents now think they might get in trouble for taking their children for no sickness reasons. Reasons for absence are coded- for sick, holiday, and explained.

 

 

 

That said we are lucky enough to be in an LA that doesn't (yet!) claw back unused hours.

[Upsy Daisy]

I've had a parent arrive at work and, just as she got out of her car, her toddler spoke. She then realised she had forgotten to drop him off with me. Had he not spoken. she would have left him in the car and not returned until the end of the day.

For that reason alone, I have always contacted parents within an hour if they don't arrive as expected.

[thumperrabbit]

By 10am on the day of absence

[Stargrower]

We contact on the day of absence. We have an attendance policy which we ask parents to read and sign. it explains the reasons that we contact them if children are absent and we haven't had a phone call to say why.

[Stargrower]

Attendance Policy for forum.docx

 

Here's our attendance policy if it's helpful to anyone...

 

[Lyanne]

I've had a parent arrive at work and, just as she got out of her car, her toddler spoke. She then realised she had forgotten to drop him off with me. Had he not spoken. she would have left him in the car and not returned until the end of the day.

 

For that reason alone, I have always contacted parents within an hour if they don't arrive as expected.

 

How scary!

 

We have an attendance policy which goes into more detail about when we'll take a child's place away for non-attendance (if a child is off for 2 weeks with no explanation, we'll write giving the parents 1 more week to say they do want a space or the place is offered to children on the waiting list), but also says we will start phoning round from 30 minutes after the start of the session.

 

Parents have been getting lots better about letting us know but we have a few who never phone in, only answer the phone when we phone them. So it can take a while to get through to all the absentees.

[louby loo]

I've had a parent arrive at work and, just as she got out of her car, her toddler spoke. She then realised she had forgotten to drop him off with me. Had he not spoken. she would have left him in the car and not returned until the end of the day.

 

For that reason alone, I have always contacted parents within an hour if they don't arrive as expected.

 

Gosh! That does make you think..

[zigzag]

I've had a parent arrive at work and, just as she got out of her car, her toddler spoke. She then realised she had forgotten to drop him off with me. Had he not spoken. she would have left him in the car and not returned until the end of the day.

For that reason alone, I have always contacted parents within an hour if they don't arrive as expected.

Oh my goodness gracious!!

[mrsbat]

We contact parents half an hour after the session starts if they haven't contacted us. Whether they contact us or we contact them it is logged on the attached sheet

 

 

child absence form for forum.doc

Edited July 27, 2016 by mrsbat

[Panders]

Thanks for sharing Mrs B, do you keep this in your safeguarding file or with your daily register ?? elsewhere?

[mrsbat]

Thanks for sharing Mrs B, do you keep this in your safeguarding file or with your daily register ?? elsewhere?

We keep them all together in a small folder which is kept in the front of our registration file which is always underneath our mobile phone so all in one place

[Sarah_Church]

Thank you all for your answers. This has all been very helpful for us

[louby loo]

I've had a parent arrive at work and, just as she got out of her car, her toddler spoke. She then realised she had forgotten to drop him off with me. Had he not spoken. she would have left him in the car and not returned until the end of the day.

 

For that reason alone, I have always contacted parents within an hour if they don't arrive as expected.

 

Seems this is not as unusual as you might think.

This link is quite old but shows it does happen

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html

[Upsy Daisy]

I saw in the news today that this has just happened to a toddler in America whilst his parents were in church. Each thought the other one had him. Very sad.

[MarshaD]

 

Seems this is not as unusual as you might think.

This link is quite old but shows it does happen

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html

Oh my goodness louby loo I had no idea how common this was. How awful and how easily done. There but for the grace of God. We usually phone around the second or third session, but I will be changing our practice to ensure we phone on the first day of absence from now on.

[nomski100]

We recently had an Ofsted inspection and they asked about children that are absent and what do we do.

 

 

You should call parents/carer on the day they are absent. If you get no response and they are off for a second day without contact you are expected to call the Safeguarding Hub. They asked me a lot of questions around the Prevent Duty and they said that this is one reason why the absent needs to be reported.

[FSFRebecca]

Yes, nomski100 is right - it should be treated as a potential safeguarding concern. You must also keep a note in the register (in pen) to say who was off and why - any unauthorised absences need to be noted in case a safeguarding concern is raised.

[Lyanne]

Yes, nomski100 is right - it should be treated as a potential safeguarding concern. You must also keep a note in the register (in pen) to say who was off and why - any unauthorised absences need to be noted in case a safeguarding concern is raised.

 

We mark in the register with S for sick, H for holiday, R for religious absence, and A for absent.

 

Each child also has a form at the front of their folder for each term, that we use to record each absence - first date of absence, date returned to preschool, notified by?, reason for absence, further action needed?

 

We also have a notes box at the bottom to put anything like "Daphne's dad brings her on Tuesdays, phone him first not mum if she's off then", or "Velma's mum's new baby due 15 June".

 

We can easily see for each child their patterns of absence and when we need to change things or chase things.

[JJA]

We contact parents by 10am on the day they are absent.

We track reasons given for absence.

We discuss at our senior team meetings any absence levels that are out of the ordinary, look at the reasons given and discuss, as SLPs, whether this gives us any cause for concern.