What happens if a family do not arrive?

[sarah707]

Do you have information in your procedures about what you will do if a family does not arrive for their normal booked session?

This happened to a childminder recently and she asked my advice.

I suggested she add some details to her safeguarding policy for example...


What happens if a child does not arrive?

While some parents can go on holiday or take a day off forgetting to inform you, sometimes when children do not arrive it can be for more worrying reasons.

For example, a parent might have fallen and hurt themselves and the child is locked in the house or there might have been a domestic incident.

The first thing to try is the normal way of contact - home or mobile phone etc.

Leave a message to explain you are concerned about the no show and let them know where you will be through the day if they want to find you with their child.

Ask for a reply within the hour explaining that you will take it further if you do not hear from them.

If parents do not reply and you have waited an hour you might want to try some other contacts depending on the information you have about the child on their initial registration forms such as -

• School or other setting the child or siblings attend

• Relatives if you have them as local emergency contacts

• Emergency contacts or friends of the family

If you do not successfully locate the family and you are still concerned you are advised not to go round to their house. Something might have happened to put you in danger or there might be something which you / the children in your care should not see.

Instead you should contact the local police, explain your concerns and follow their advice.

I hope this helps :D

[Donkey]

our LSCB are hot on this...

we have a procedure to follow if a child is missing from provision...

:s

[Bridey]

Good advice - thanks Sarah.

[Kiddleywinks]

Slightly different but could happen the other way

Years ago, I worked at a pre school. One of our little ones, aged 3, was at group for the morning session, he had 2 elder siblings who were at school, and a younger baby sibling, 8 or 9 months I think.

At lunchtime, mum wasn't there to collect, she wasn't the most punctual, so it wasn't an unusual occurrence. After 10 minutes, or so, once all the other children had left, we tried calling her landline. No reply. We tried calling her mobile. No reply. This went on for a good 10 minutes.
One of our staff knew the lady in question, and volunteered to pop the 5 doors down from the hall.

Mum appeared to be asleep on the sofa, with baby in a travel cot, crying and obviously distressed.
Neighbours next door commented on the fact that it had been going on for a couple of hours and wished she'd shut up.... preschool was only 2 and half hour session.
Between the staff member and the neighbour they managed to get in the house via a back window.

Mum had died in her sleep.

I will never, ever, forget that day. She was 28 years old and a single mum of 4.


Hope this never happens to anyone else, but you can never be too careful with a missing child or parent x

[md0u0131]

Thanks Sarah, I haven't got anything in about this, will make sure to add it.

[clorogue]

Thanks Sarah, that is really useful information :)

[miffy]

Thank you Sarah

Miffy xx

[Bluebell]

:eek: OMG! Chrissie that is awful and demonstrates Sarahs point perfectly. How awful. This would never have occured to me - I had a no show once and I just got really annoyed but fortunately did manage to get hold of her!
Your advice is very helpful - as always Sarah - thank you for sharing

[Pipsqueak]

Do you have information in your procedures about what you will do if a family does not arrive for their normal booked session?



Go out for the day and ignore their texts and phone calls when they are braying your door down

:laughing:

[Pipsqueak]

Slightly different but could happen the other way

Years ago, I worked at a pre school. One of our little ones, aged 3, was at group for the morning session, he had 2 elder siblings who were at school, and a younger baby sibling, 8 or 9 months I think.

At lunchtime, mum wasn't there to collect, she wasn't the most punctual, so it wasn't an unusual occurrence. After 10 minutes, or so, once all the other children had left, we tried calling her landline. No reply. We tried calling her mobile. No reply. This went on for a good 10 minutes.
One of our staff knew the lady in question, and volunteered to pop the 5 doors down from the hall.

Mum appeared to be asleep on the sofa, with baby in a travel cot, crying and obviously distressed.
Neighbours next door commented on the fact that it had been going on for a couple of hours and wished she'd shut up.... preschool was only 2 and half hour session.
Between the staff member and the neighbour they managed to get in the house via a back window.

Mum had died in her sleep.

I will never, ever, forget that day. She was 28 years old and a single mum of 4.


Hope this never happens to anyone else, but you can never be too careful with a missing child or parent x

oh that is awful:panic:

[MAWI]

Christie H, that is such a sad story and I can't imagine how awful that must have been. Thank you Sarah for info, I agree with Bluelion, it demonstrates the point.
I always try to ensure that parents let me know if they are not attending and I'm lucky enough that most do. Recently I have had several instances from different parents where they have 'forgot' to tell me that X was not attending today. They really couldn't see why I had left them several messages and texts or indeed what the fuss was all about!! This story just goes to show, why we need to double and triple check and try to get a respone and what we need to do if we dont. it would be so easy(in my case anyway) to decide and assume that X has not arrived, so he must be sick.

[The Juggler]

what a sad story Chrissie.

Sarah thanks for that. I have procedures in place for when children are 'missing' with no contact for a few days or more but never thought of things like parents locked in house alone on day 1.

I guess though you would get worried if they didn't turn up and you couldn't get hold of them all morning - at least with my parents I would as they are very reliable.

I guess if you have unreliable parents who are bad at contact then it's even more important to have these procedures in place as you woudl just assume 'oh they've decided not to come today and its not unusual for me not to be able to contact them'. In this case it's where you'd not worry too much but maybe where we should.

Will def. add more detail into my safeguarding.