Well you are, if you expect First Aid from a soft play centre!!!

[Lucyellensmum100]

If you take your child to a soft play centre, they have no legal obligation whatsoever to provide first aid if your child injures itself. This from the Environmental health and safety officer at my local council.

Thankfully though, most places would probably rush to assist you. I wont name names because that would be wrong but my child was injured in a soft play centre in Herne Bay and we were offered no assistance or first aid equipment, in terms of towels to stem blood flow etc, someone to calm me and my daughter down because i was quite frankly in an total panic. They couldnt even tell me where the local Minor injuries unit was.

I reported this to the local authorities and they have said that the only come back i have is to file a civil case, which i dont want to do, the accident wasn't their fault, but some concern would have been nice. They have upheld the complaint in terms of them sending feedback to the place but can take no action as they have acted within the law - surely this can't be right???

Apparently the responsibility lies with the parents! well yes, of course it does, but i don't carry a first aid box around with me - i had to go to the toilets to try and find something to stem the blood flow (my DD had bitten through her tongue) I amd incredulous that this is apparently OK.

I don't think you were unreasonable to expect a first aid kit but you have been aggressive in this thread, not only as a response to others but your OP was quite fiery. Perhaps this is what got people's backs up.

oh god forbid someone shows a bit of emotion when their child has an accident

An ambulance isn't for when you have no transport an ambulance is for an emergency. To even think about that is an over reaction and perhaps you need to store the phone number of a local taxi service in your phone (999 isn't a taxi service btw)

a child bleeding profusely could well be an emergency. So get off your soapbox

Anyway I am hoping the OP really has gone to do something more productive than argue on this thread so so will I :)

The hospital referred my daughter to the maxio-facial specialist at another hospital, where she was seen as an emergency. After much head scratching they decided that a GA and stitch up wasn't necessary but pointed out to me that she had only just missed a major nerve and we would have been facing a very different situation. My daughter was unable to eat for three days, and only drunk when pretty much forced to do so. We, as hysterical parents do, took my DD to our GP who said that whilst she expected my DD to fully recover, if she didn't drink a significant amount within the next few hours then she would be admitted for rehydration. But yeah, it was just a silly little cut - alot of hysteria about nothing. Thanks guys.

You don't need to justify yourself to anyone :)

It wasn't emotion fanjo it came across as aggressive on here. I'm just saying that's how I read it and perhaps others did too.

so what if she felt aggressive towards the play centre? Didn't deserve all this goading and personal comments about her personality.

Unless the tongue has fallen off or the child has a clotting problem I struggle to see how it could ever need an ambulance. Miuse of ambulance is a massive bug bear of mine so I will stay very comfortably on my soap box thank you!

Lucyellensmum I completely agree with you. I would not expect a trained first aider on site, but what I would expect is the staff to know the location of the first aid box, who the nearest first aider is and the names/addresses of local A&E,minor injuries, even a local doctor.

That is the absolute minimum I would expect in a place in which children are likely to get injured! It is also the minimum we are expected to provide at work (university) for adult children. Ironically, if your grown-up child injured themselves in our university, they would have trained staff on hand, plus an emergency plan in action. It happened recently, a man became very ill during a visit, and the plan swung into action, the ambulance was called, designated staff took charge of both the ill man and caring for his family (for hours). We didn't say 'sorry, you're an adult, you are here with your family, you deal with it'!!!!!!

I often go to new play centres when on holiday or visiting friends. I think it is completely unreasonable to have to do a risk assessment and find out all this information when I attend.

I cannot believe the crap of 'you should take an emergency kit' with you. What if the parent was ALSO injured (as in the incident above). They should have a procedure for dealing with this, even if it is just to provide you with basic medical supplies and point you calmly and sensibly to the right local medical facility.

she didn't even call a bloody ambulance

I agree, the vultures did come out and I'm not making excuses for them.

Mumsy - do you expect all playgrounds to have first aid kit then? Children are much more likely to get hurt on a playground than in a soft play so how would you work that?

It is also not absolutely clear when an ambulance is needed, sometimes you decide not, and then things worsen and you do. Again, if there is a trained person who knows the procedures, the local numbers and can provide some assistance, they can help a parent make that decision.

Lucyellensmum you should not have to prove your child was very seriously injured to make your point. You were scared, you looked for the nearest first aider/box/information, and there was none, and they didn't seem to care. That is completely unacceptable and I can understand why you are very upset.

I also appreciate you warning us. I cannot believe that soft-play have no such obligation to provide even minimal first aid facilities, such as I have had in every single office and institution I have ever worked in!

You know what, I've never thank god had cause to think about whether or not soft play places had trained 1st aiders, or indeed a 1st aid box, but now you raise it, I guess I am surprised a bit given the reasonable potential for minor injuries and the less likely, but still possible, risk of serious injuries given the nature of the place. Sure, kids can hurt themselves on an outdoor council owned playpark and parents accept that risk by letting them play there ... we all know that if they hurt themselves we'll have to deal with it. We also accept the risk of them getting hurt at soft play (most likely from crashing heads with another kid IME) but I suppose I feel a bit differently about that given that I have actually paid, and that there are actually staff on the premises who, you might reasonably imagine, are paid not just to take money, serve food and lock up but to show some notion of care towards their customers. That doesn't mean I'd ever expect to hand over all responsibility to them .... I watch my kids like a hawk, fret (a bit) when I can't see them and readily intervene if they look like they're about to do something dangerous etc - but if the worse came to the worse then yes, at the very least (leaving aside arguments about what a 1st aider could or could not have done in the particular situation described by this thread) I'd hope that any member of staff, even if not medically trained, would show some basic human decency and compassion once they were alerted to the fact there was an injured and/or distressed child on their premises. Personally, that is what I'd find upsetting in a similar situation ... the fact that my child's distress seemingly meant nothing to them once they'd taken my money. Sure .... it'd be nice if other people in the vicinity helped out, showed concern and so on, but somehow I think there's a greater onus on the organisation which you've paid to try and help - just by being human about it at least.

Contrast this ..... a few years ago I inadvertently shut my toddler daughter's fingers in the boot of my car in Tesco's car park. I was holding her other hand and obviously had no idea that she'd placed her other hand on the edge of the boot. It was awful ..... she was hysterical, I was fumbling to get the boot open again, everything seemed to go in slow motion. I was crying, she was crying/screaming, her hand looked awful (thankfully just bruised, not broken). I ran back into Tesco with her meaning to put her hand in cold water in the loo but was grabbed by a customer services woman who immediately called their 1st aider, told someone else to go and get frozen peas, wrapped those up in cloth and applied to hand - all before 1st aider arrived. Who turned out to be lovely. And then someone got her some sweets to distract her. I normally hate Tesco but I couldn't fault their attitude that day .... and they were just being nice and compassionate and helpful like you'd hope any decent person would be. They certainly didn't have any obligation to help seeing as I'd done it.

Mumsy the first aid box at your offices would have been for use of staff. The soft play probably did have one of these for their staff.

In a local playground, I have not paid money to enter!!!

If I enter a private building, such as a restaurant, or soft-play centre, yes, I do expect the private owners who have taken my money and are providing the facilities to have at least minimal first aid facilities, especially where children are involved.

Also, in busy public places such as railway stations, buses, and so on, I would expect the same. or at least some modicum of knowledge of how to proceed with injuries. When there is a major public disaster, you don't stand about saying 'oh well, you should have brought your own first aid kit, I'm not obliged to help', do you? Or perhaps you do?

All of these places are supposed to have evacuation plans, be regulated by Health and Safety (so their food is safe), fire risk assessments, because they are either public or private buildings where there is a liability to do so. I cannot understand why first aid would be an exception.

Well, im glad to have gotten a few peoples goats - im off to enjoy the last day of the holiday with my DD. I don't think we will be visiting any soft play centres. Its crazy golf all the way for us today, not before, of course checking that they have a full emergency protocol, stores of blood of all blood types and insisting that they only use foam balls and plastic clubs.

I often let loose on here and accept that people will react in kind - it doesn't bother me, but i REALLY don't have the time or inclination to waste any further time on this bunfight so you guys enjoy lobbing sticky buns at each other.

Im deregistering now - not because i feel pushed out, so please please don't feel guilty or triumphant if you are a bit of a cunt I just have stuff that i NEED to get done before friday and if im here chucking buns i am going to have a whole lot more problems than worrying what i happening in the vipers nest. I daresay i'll be back in the fray soon. But right now i need to sort my life out - for that reason.............tata

Have a good day lucy

Is it terrible that I was all excited when I read the opening post as I now know there are other local MNetters

That soft play centre did used to have a terrible reputation, I thought it had improved, clearly not.

X post

Thedoctrineofennis, so when one of our students parents collapsed recently, we should have just stepped over him and said 'it's up to your family to deal with it', we are only concerned with staff, should we? Of course not! We are a public institution, with a duty to care for our students, which includes both their mental and physical health and have a whole host of prodecures and policies in place to do so. I can assure you that if a student has an injury in their halls of residence/sets their kitchen alight and so on, there will be a designated person in each hall to swing the first aid procedures into place plus an emergency telephone which is manned 24 hours.

No This week, they are still as rude and uncaring as they ever were!

Mumsy I think students are different from a legal perspective.

Please note that I was clarifying the law re office first aid kits. I have stated upthread I think this was poor customer service.