Baby taken away by social services whilst in A&E

[napol]

Hi

I'm new to Mumsnet but am in desperate need of help/advice or better still has anyone out there been in the same situation as me.

I dropped my 10 month old boy at nursery one morning at 8am. He was his normal self - happy chappy with no injuries. I got a call from the nursery at 4.30pm from the manager saying despite no accident happening at nursery throughout the day he had developed a lump on the side of his head but not to worry as he was in no pain or discomfort but best I get it checked out.

we picked him up and took him to a&e immediately where to our horror he was diagnosed with a fractured skull. because the injury was unexplained social services and police were called and the decision was made not to let us take our baby boy home. We are now under investigation and cannot see him unless supervised. it looks like it will go to court months down the line.

We are innocent of any neglect or wrong doing and it seems to us the nursery are obviously to blame. Understandably we are devastated and heartbroken and just want our boy home

Good luck with the meetings OP, I hope and pray this is all resolved quickly for you and your family

If it happened at nursery I’d think it would be more likely to be accidental.

What mechanism of accidental injury do you think could cause a broken skull in a 10 month old child towards the back of his head in a nursery environment, that no one would have noticed?

OP Handhold here.
I hope your baby is making a good recovery from his injury and is coping okay from being away from you

With what you say about his hair-or lack of, I feel it would be completely impossible for such an injury to not be noticed for over eight hours, especially as it sounds like your son was suffering (call for calpol).

Ime the head is a particular place with lots of blood rushing there to provide the brain with oxygen and any injury there bleeds heavily and quickly. The “lump” or haematoma would have started to develop very quickly after an injury so forceful as to cause a skill fracture.

So for me there is an issue with nursery either way-they either failed to note an injury in judicious time or they failed to note the bump developing...

I agree with @BertrandRussell
I can't believe how many people are jumping to conclusions here without necessarily knowing the full facts. The only thing that matters is that the child is in a safe environment until the facts are established.

I hope your little boy is ok OP and recovering well.

Also hope all SS stuff is dealt with swiftly and your little boy is back home soon.

I do worry about threads like this. We really know absolutely nothing about what went on. We have no idea of the back story.
The social services are far too pushed to snatch random babies with no evidence, and OP really ought to be focussing on getting the legal help she needs. Offer support, of course. But please stop saying that the nursery is obviously guilty and the family is completely innocent. We just don’t know that, and multiple posters saying it won’t help. And will just reinforce other people’s unnecessary fears

This. And I say this as someone who had awful working class parents who filled every stereotype possible; and were horrendously neglectful, and I spent a lot of my teen years campaigning for them to take my younger sisters into care. They wouldn't. They felt my parents deserved more chances to get it right.

Not everyone's experiences are like mine, but SS isn't running round stealing kids, either.

OP needs proper legal advice for her unique situation.

I work in a nursery myself and if we ever thought that a child needed calpol as the had a temperature then that child had to go home. The reason for this (at most of the nursery's near me) is because by giving them calpol could cover up any other (possibly more serious) symptoms so we can't make that decision (basically saving our own backs incase something has happened. However if I ( child's keyworker) or manager phoned the parents expressing they needed to come and get them we could other calpol until they pick up but we had to record it on a medication form writing what was said in the phone call and which parent agreed to the calpol with a date and time, that parent then had to sign it themselves. In regards to accident forms we also had to write down the accident, type of injury, where it was, what first aid was given, date time, any witnesses, was the child upset/sleepy etc, head injury got monitored and written down every 10 minutes for an hour and parents get called. If we didn't see the accident then we would write down what we do know, what was the child doing just before the accident, where they playing with anyone else, what toys where out eg hard wooden or soft etc, how is the child on himself, all staff if the room would then sign it as they where present and if it was serious parents would get a phone call. I know the people investigating the nursery proberly know this but make sure they check the children's register plus the staff daily sheet, a lot of nursery have more children in a room that they can legally have (obviously as a parent you won't know) by accepting children that phone up on the day wanting a place or because staff phone in sick and they can't get cover plus each room can only have a certain amount or children based on the size for example my old nursery could only have 12 babies and for adults (based on the room size) the ratio your baby would be under is 1:3 1 adult to ever three children, by checking the registers you would be able to quickly see if they where over ratio and breaking the law. Sorry that is proberly very rambly but hopefully you'll be able to get some sense from it

we believe it was an accident at nursery, falling from a changing table or something. it was only his 6th ever visit to nursery, perhaps they were unfamiliar with handling him, etc.

As far as class is concerned we both have good jobs and good income and live in a lovely child friendly house. photos of him everywhere and beautiful nursery full of toys. We've taken him abroad on holiday twice and he goes to loads of baby classes and swimming lessons.

My partner is an accountant and I am an account manager and there has been no involvement with social services prior to this

What mechanism of accidental injury do you think could cause a broken skull in a 10 month old child towards the back of his head in a nursery environment, that no one would have noticed?

Falling backwards and whacking its head, enthusiastic picking up and dropping by another child due to inadequate supervision.

Otherwise they apparently failed to notice that a baby arrived into their care with major head injury. That should have been picked up on immediately.

Hope everything gets sorted out quickly.

There's a very few people who know for sure what happened and I'm sure SS are doing their best to establish the truth and do whatever's best for an injured baby.

OP I hope your boy is making a good recovery and that you're getting all the support you need while you're waiting for this to be resolved

My skull got fractured as a 10 month old baby (I apparently fell off a chair on to a concrete floor). My mum tells me the lump on my head came up very quickly.

@tatianalarina The OP says in her first post that when she picked her son up he was happy and in no pain or discomfort.

Perhaps the injury had happened previously at home, and the nursery just noticed the bump on his head, were confused as he hadn't had any injuries and advised the OP to get him checked as something seemed wrong?

Babies fall backwards all the time as they are learning to walk, it's a low impact injury from such a low height and shouldn't cause a broken skull. Same with being dropped by another toddler - it would be from a low height and unlikely to be enough force to break a skull. The child would also be very distressed if they were dropped and broke their skull. Why would nursery bother to cover up such a low impact event? They had no way of knowing the child had a broken skull.

A broken skull in a baby is a sign they have been the victim of a injury involving lots of force. In the absence of a story that would explain it this is VERY suspicious of child abuse. The injury doesn't have to be witnessed, but you would expect a story along the lines of 'I turned to get a nappy and he fell of the changing table, but he seems ok now', or 'I turned my back for one minute and he fell down he stairs'.

Saying ' oh, i guess another pre-school child hit him on the head with a train and broke his skull' doesn't make sense.

Sorry Napol, that wasn't a presumption about your own class something I hate anyway but to say that I have witnessed this kind of prejudice from Doctors, in one instance SS was used like a sword over less educated parents head to get them to comply & not make a fuss over obvious poor treatment. We have several SS friends though & I've never seen any of them behave in anyway snuffy of prejudice, that's not to say that they can't of course

In what way?! People have shared their experiences of similar occurrences. Do you live in such a bubble that you can't work out how this can happen?!

Just in support of SS, I have had involvement and I found them very reasonable, much more reasonable than the health visitor who referred me who was determined that I was doing something wrong.

I was 21, a lone parent, struggling massively with undiagnosed ADHD and depression resulting from that as well as recovering from an abusive relationship. I didn't have a beautiful house, nor could I afford swimming lessons. DS1 was at the time a cute, white, healthy/normally developing boy under 3, so according to the rhetoric he would have been "extremely adoptable" and I would probably have been top of their list for "victims" - yet this was not my experience at all. MN threads used to terrify me. In hindsight the advice to keep communication open with them and remain calm, understand the process and try to keep in touch with the positives - he's with people he knows who love him, you get to see him every day. This was all good and I think you're doing the right thing. It must be incredibly hard and I know (from other experiences, not this one specifically) that the cogs at SS can be slow to turn at times which must be very frustrating. But as long as they see you are working with them you will get him back as quickly as possible.

I would definitely highlight the calpol request. I also think it's unusual that they would give calpol for a temperature but keep the child there - perhaps their policy could be consulted. The medication request and reasoning should be recorded somewhere. In addition if a child does have a temperature IME it doesn't just magically go away, calpol will reduce it for a few hours but then it will come back, until the illness has passed. So it would be very strange if he'd had no temperature that morning or the preceding few days, suddenly presented with a temperature at 11am which is then completely gone by the time you pick him up (at which point calpol would have worn off), and if he'd had a temperature when presented at A&E, this would have been recorded - so you essentially have proof that there was no temperature at that time.

God OP, how truly awful. It really concerns me that social services in these cases don't take into account the infants mental health/attatchment and the impact forced seperation from parents will have in the name of child protection! I am relieved to hear you at least get 1.5 hours a day with him but this is not enough. I really hope this is sorted for you soon. I am very concerned that nursery are allowed to remain open in such a case!

I just wanted advice and if anyone could share any similar experiences as something similar must have happened to other people as well. Apologies if people think the thread has got out of hand. as you can imagine this is completely new to us and we don't know what to do.

posts from the likes of @ahhgoongoongoonhaveacupoftea make me feel uncomfortable to continue posting on here.

thanks for support and helpful messages

I have worked in many nurseries over the years and this bump must have been documented by them. So I think you should speak to the nursery and find out how it was documented if no response or explaination ring and speak to OFSTED as it appeared during his time at nursery it should have been reported to them by the nursery as it required hospital treatment. Hope this gets sorted soon for you.

The OP says in her first post that when she picked her son up he was happy and in no pain or discomfort.

No she doesn't. She said when she dropped him off he was happy and in no pain or discomfort.