London: An investigation has been launched into how a school reportedly handed over the wrong child to a man who came to collect his granddaughter for a doctor’s appointment.
The six-year-old girl, who shares the same first name as the man’s granddaughter and is in the same year, accompanied him on a bus from the school to the doctor and was prescribed liquid paracetamol before she was dropped back to class. Her family learned of the visit when she returned home and showed the medicine to her mother.
The incident happened at Gillingham’s Napier primary school on Tuesday morning, according to a report in Kent Online, which said the girl’s father took her to the clinic to check that she had not invented the story of her visit.
“I went ballistic. I was boiling inside. The first thing I thought was the worst. I had to ask my daughter the sort of questions no parent ever wants to ask: ‘Did he do this, did he do that?’.
“When your daughter has been walked round town and taken on a bus by a strange man, it makes you sick to the stomach. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. Everyone knows to tell their children not to go with strangers, but I want to tell every parent in that school tell them again tonight.
“Thank God it was an innocent thing done by a confused old gentleman.”
The headteacher, Zerina Slade, said an investigation had been launched and all procedures in connection with children’s safety were being reviewed.
She said: “I have also spoken with the mother of this child to offer our sincere apologies over this regrettable incident and to assure her that we are reviewing all our safeguarding policies with the help of the council to ensure this never happens again.”
