Not sure it is fair to throw blame at schools. They must follow medical advice, and also safeguarding practices - ie there is a duty to report concerns. What medical advisors to schools & social services suggest afterwards is the real nub of the problem. Also there is a serious problem is discontinuing a case once it is initiated. There seems no mechanism for halting an investigation into a family once it has been started. This is devastating for genuine parents who then find many other areas of their lives questioned - often by young social workers with little life experience and some with no parenting experience themselves!!
You would think that wouldn't you? I would have too, until personal experience taught me otherwise.
In my extended family, we had a crisis situation develop involving a young teen with a serious, potentially life altering, recognized disease. Due to issues at home, a single parent in mental health crisis, this was not being managed at all well. Part of the adult's issues meant they were very secretive and cut themselves and their child off from family.
The paediatric hospital service (who were excellent) told me they have to wait until things are really bad before they can get social services involved. Then social services normally do their best to ignore them. In our case, the hospital team even offered and requested, with our permission, that they attend a social service review. Social services didn't want them there and ignored them.
The school didn't chase up repeated school absences. They were also aware of these teen's medical condition. The child hadn't been keeping up with schoolwork and, while not disruptive, altered behaviour was ringing alarms bells. Nothing was done.
In fact, from the experience of my family, the school didn't do much at all and waited for someone else to take action, social services were dragging their feet in the hopes the child would reach 16 and could then simply be passed on to adult services if need be. They called us to meetings that dragged on for hours and went nowhere. This was a situation where the family were being entirely open and cooperative.
So, I would say, schools have a lot more leeway than you might think and they'll sometimes take the action that suits them best regardless of the family or child involved.
Social (child) services couldn't care less. Even when they are dealing with a child with a well recognized lifelong condition that can lead to very serious life altering and threatening complications. Even when they have hospital services pushing them. They do what suits their current agenda.
I'm sorry, this is an angry post. Our family desperately needed their input and they couldn't be arsed. Yet, a family whose child has ME they hound. No logic, no sense. Bloody useless.
Edit - clarification
