FNP Telephone Contacts of the Parents
When the student’s absences reached 10% of the year (e.g.,
on Day 86, nine absences ¼ 10%) and was illness-related,
the FNP attempted to contact the parent by telephone. The
FNP made calls from school-based locations to Head Start
families between 9 a.m. and 2.30 p.m. and to elementary
school families between 2.30 and 5 p.m. to assess the illness.
The telephone calls were categorized as follows:
1. No parental response (no answers, wrong number,
phone disconnected, no answering machine or machine
full, or respondent was not the parent).
2. No answer; the FNP left a standardized message.
3. Someone answered but hung up before responding.
4. A parent answered and talked for more than 30 s.
When a parent was reached and willing to talk, the FNP
named the child’s teacher, social worker, or school nurse and
explained that they had informed her that the child had been
absent from school several times. If the parent reported that
the absence was illness, the FNP offered to make a home
visit or to see the child in the school nurse’s office. Each
conversation ended with 10 standardized sentences about the
importance of school attendance.