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A grieving mother is calling on schools to make extra checks on students who don’t turn up at school.

Her two young daughters, Pearl and Iris, spent nearly 24 hours with the body of their father after his sudden death.

Helen Daykin was travelling for work when her husband Chris died of heart failure last year.

The girls, aged two and four, tried to wake up their dad.

When Chris didn’t answer his wife’s call that morning, she assumed he was busy preparing Pearl for her third week of school, shares Yahoo news.

It wasn’t until later that night when Ms Daykin’s mother found all the lights turned off and the milk outside that Mr Daykin’s body was found – with the shaken young girls cuddled up next to him.

Pearl’s school did try and contact Chris when Pearl didn’t show up but she said they should have called her too.

“Please go and ask your child’s school what their policy is on ‘First Day Calling’. If you don’t get a satisfactory answer, keep pushing them until you do,” she wrote on Facebook.

“If they can’t answer it means they don’t know. That’s not acceptable, push for a better response.”

A review of student absentee policies in Australian schools was ordered after an eight-year-old boy was found trapped and unresponsive in a car in Melbourne last year in scorching temperatures. His mum believed he was at school.

“The Victorian School Policy and Advisory Guide states if a parent does not contact the school to provide an explanation on the day of their child’s absence, the school must attempt to contact the parent of the student within three days of the absence, although many Catholic schools have shorter follow-up periods.”

ALL schools in Victoria will now have to notify parents of absent children as soon as practicable under a new government policy after the near-death of the young boy.

Just devastating! Our thoughts are with them all x

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Image via BBC

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  • Oh my goodness, I just bawled watching that video. Those poor little girls, what they must have experienced for those hours. Poor mum, she’s lost a life partner. Poor grandma being the one to find it all.

    Reply

  • My thoughts are with the Grandma who found them too. I hope the children managed to get themselves drinks so they didn’t dehydrate. They are fortunate that the Grandma checked on them. Some Public Schools attempt to contact parents that morning. Many years ago the procedure was one of the parents either contacted the school the first day they were absent, spoke to the teacher when the child returned to school or sent a note. Some Doctors now issue sick certificates to the school letting them know that the child is well enough to return to school.

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  • The poor little darlings having to experience something like that. Schools should be contacting both parents I think. How awful. My thoughts to the mother and the two little girls.

    Reply

  • I watched the video. Heartbreaking. And the girls giving tablets to their dad. So sad. And if the school had alerted the mother, they could have intervened earlier and avoid leaving those two sweet little girls with their dad for such a long time. :-(
    I receive an sms if my daughter isn’t at school. But she’s in high school.

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  • Such a tragedy – those poor girls! The school should have tried to contact both parents …..

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  • Oh wow, how horrible. So traumatic for these beautiful little girls. This family have a lot to get through with all this going on

    Reply

  • How very sad. I’m surprised the school didn’t try both parents.

    Reply

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