we've had several children and staff sick this week. yesterday we actually had more relievers and people who were not supposed to be working than we did regular thursday staff! there was not one regular worker in the other room that was in and we were missing the morning teacher in our room. we've had anywhere from 4-7 children away each day in our room.
i had a VERY annoying situation again this morning with a father. he came in and told me his daughter (who looked absolutely horrible) had been a bit warm this morning but was fine now. temperatures don't naturally just go away like that (but panadol will make it do that). i should have said to him right then that she couldn't be at kinder because she's obviously ill and should rest instead of spreading her germs to all of us. instead i went and told the director. she came in to see the situation and the father told her "i don't know what happened-- she was fine this morning." (wtf!?!?!). even though the director told him his daughter looks pretty bad he left her (and promised to come pick her up "early"-- mid afternoon instead of late afternoon). the girl told us she'd had panadol (as she always does in these situations). half an hour after she arrived we left a message on her mum's mobile to say it would be best to get her asap. 3.5 hours later we'd had no response. the girl was doing ok (that's to her panadol which was numbing her flu effects) but definitely not herself (and we weren't looking forward to the breakdown when the panadol wore off). we called her mum at work who wasn't at all surprised that we asked her to come get her daughter. 20 minutes later her dad arrived to his daughter running around and chatting to him. he asked me what was wrong. i said she was not herself and pretty quiet (which was true until she saw him). he didn't believe me and his daughter said nothing was wrong with her. he took her but he was pretty annoyed we wouldn't let her stay. she shouldn't have been there in the first place!!! he KNEW she was unwell, lied about it and denied it. yes it's probably tough to take time off work or find someone to care for a sick child but its unfair to the child, the staff and other children and families when people bring their sick child into kinder or childcare. both me and another staff came into work today feeling pretty unwell but we knew we pretty much had to because there was nobody to cover for us (i'm not sure if the other girl will even make it to the end of her shift). if parents kept sick children at home the staff would be a lot less likely to get all the illnesses going around.
i'm done with my rant. now off to finish my tea and have a nap.
No comments:
Post a Comment