Teachers deal with everything from neglect to abuse on a regular basis. It might sound uncaring, but if we always let it get to us, our job would be impossible
Two days before the February half term, one of our Somali parents – a tall, beautiful mother – came to the office asking for me. She wanted a letter from the school saying she was the sole adult responsible for her child. When I asked why she explained that she wanted to take her daughter away at half term and the visa office was reluctant to let her go unless she could prove she was the only adult in charge.
Oh, a trip, that’s nice. Where was she going? To Yemen. On holiday? No, to see her unwell mother (the child’s grandmother) who she hadn’t seen for several years.
Something didn’t feel right. I excused myself, popped out of the room to gather my thoughts and asked one of my colleagues for advice. Two years previously I had made a referral to medical services for the child; they were a Somali-speaking family and I didn’t recall Yemen being part of their history. I dug out the records and found that the maternal grandmother was mentioned twice as living in Somalia, not Yemen. Could she have moved?
What about her father? Neither my colleague nor I had ever seen a man collecting the child – a quick check with the class teacher confirmed that. He was mentioned as living abroad in my records, but we didn’t have any paperwork to say the father wasn’t involved in his child’s upbringing.
Then it dawned on me. The child was nine-years-old, could there be a risk of female genital mutilation (FGM)?
I asked the mother to wait a little longer and did a quick check online. Yemen was not too far from Somalia, you just need to cross part of either Djibouti or Eritrea and a stretch of water. But hang on, Yemen is currently in political turmoil – conflicts with the Houthis, Islah and the al-Qaida insurgency. Only last January there was a coup d’etat so this was definitely not a holiday destination.
We needed more time. I went back to the waiting parent and told her we’d probably be able to provide a letter but we couldn’t do it there and then.
After she left, my colleague and I went back online, searching for more information. When we discovered that Yemen is top of the league in terms of countries where FGM is likely to happen, we went straight to social care. Even though it probably wasn’t that long, it felt like forever waiting for a response from the duty team. “Put it in writing”, they advised. “Send it in and we will decide whether to act or not.”
Time was ticking. Putting our planned work for the morning on hold, my colleague and I wrote a hurried referral. While we waited for them to come back to us, we decided to see what we could glean from the child without worrying her. Playtime is always a good opportunity for tasks like this; children naturally seek out trusted adults to tell them their news. It wasn’t hard to find the child, and with her friends around, ask all of them what their plans were for the holiday. It was apparent that she did not know she was going away. More alarm bells rang.
By the end of the day social care had responded. After consideration, they said, they were not going to intervene. We both felt that there was a risk, and would have preferred at least someone to speak to the parent prior to her leaving, but without any official backing we were powerless.
So we wrote the only thing we could for the parent’s letter – that the mother was the only adult who collected her child. It felt like a message of doom.
During the half term, I thought about the girl and what she might be enduring. Back at school – the very first day – the mother dropped her off. The holiday had not been prolonged and she seemed tranquil – no indication of harm or signs of discomfort.
Even though our fears were unfounded this time, as a teacher, you worry about your role and responsibility all the time. Whatever you’re faced with, you have to stay calm and objective the whole way through. It might seem impersonal and uncaring to calmly go through procedures and protocols while a young child’s health could be under threat, but the truth is that we do this all the time. We deal with families who abuse their children physically and sexually, as well as through neglect. Some children live in one room with two adults and siblings, others don’t eat except at school. Some live with parents with mental health issues, who may be alcohol or drug abusers, or who are on suicide watch. Some children get taken into care permanently, some temporarily.
There’s often a new trauma that makes you question whether you’ve made the right judgement. What if you failed to notice or to respond to something appropriately? Relationships with parents are tricky enough and, even if there isn’t a problem, calling in social services can undo years of building trust. We’re constantly treading a thin line between right and wrong, making value judgements every day of the week – it’s holding your nerve in school and when you go home, while caring deeply for your students, that’s the real skill.
Source: The Guardian
