Nursery dropped 12 month old baby off changing table - can any one help?

[Yokomoyr]

[Name redacted by MNHQ] nursery in Birmingham:

During the first 2 hours of the first day of my then 12 month old son being there - they dropped him off a changing table onto a hard floor.

He had a huge lump on his head and was quite drowsy for a week afterwards, but neither A+E nor GP seemed too concerned.

Now he is struggling with communication and when we tried to get a medical examiner and solicitor to help us get some money out of the nursery to pay for Speech and Language Therapy, we have pretty much been told it cannot be linked and nothing has been done.

I would like someone to at least tell me they will look into this nursery or provide some help in the private SLT (as NHS is taking >6 months to refer through) - is that unreasonable?

Put my most precious person in the care of someone else and in an inexcusable moment when full attention was meant to be on him, there was a serious error which lead to a severe head injury in a 1 year old child.

Must admit I feel quite let down.

It's not very helpful people saying it wasn't an accident. Accidents happen all the time. You weren't there to witness what actually happened. Everyone seems to have made up a scenario where the staff member plonked the one year old on a high table and walked off. Maybe the staff member put the child on the changing table and maybe dropped a wipe or nappy mid change and instinctively bent down to grab it. In that split second the child could have rolled off the table. Therefore that would be an accident not negligence.

All we do know is the child fell off a change table and received a none serious bump on the head that multiple healthcare professionals weren't worried about he was sent straight home without treatment and now a still very young child has some sort of speech delay and a mother demanding money to seek private speech therapy.

About to say changing on a unit in nurseries is the norm..never worked in one where there hasn't been a unit. Usually a bar or something in place to prevent rolling off but on the floor.. nope!

If the hospital were not concerned at the time I would say there's no connection to the accident and his speech delays x
I have a child with speech delay and i was always looking for a reason initially but sometimes there is no answer x

Yes Yabu.

Speech problems are so common it's much more likely to be totally unrelated.

However...if you think your son has brain damage due to this injury then take him back to the GP and push for a proper diagnosis of such. Report the nursery to Ofstead or equivalent if you feel they were negligent.

All you're doing is going for compo 🙄

The nursery won't entertain you and its highly unlikely anyone will touch such a legal case with a bargepole, as you've discovered.

Save your time and effort - you won't get any money for this.

op with the best will in the world your lo language difficulty probably has nothing to do with this -just because you found something which suggests a link doesn't prove this.
So lets imagine you try for no win, no fee. While you don't pay the solicitor doesn't mean you won't have major expenses -first, you will need to pay for medical report second probably a barrister -think a about five thousand or more.
but the major thing is that you need enough medical evidence for the solicitor to consider the case & frankly, op, from the information you have provided -you don't. No evidence on the medical notes?
However, you can & should talk to OFSTED

@Yokomoyr

Thanks to everyone's replies -

I accept that accidents are inevitable, nurseries generally have a 1:3 type policy and if he was at floor level and just fell but the member of staff was elsewhere with another child, I could completely understand...

However, this was a 1:1 care situation with a child at a height off the ground that is not normal. The primary duty of care is to make sure they do not fall, the second is to change the nappy.

if this happened to an adult at work, or in another setting, or to a child that could talk, we could make a case.

Even minor head injuries can be serious:

• Long term psychosocial outcomes after mild head injury in early childhood - BMJ (jnnp.bmj.com/content/73/3/281)
• class="break-all" href="https://academic.oup.com/neurosurgery/article-abstract/13/5/529/2744945" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">academic.oup.com/neurosurgery/article-abstract/13/5/529/2744945

Scans can demonstrate what appear to be minor head injuries which are actually quite damaging, but intervention is also helpful:

We just want resolution to this situation

@Jemi202 is absolutely correct.

The article about children doesn’t support you at all, OP. Perhaps there was some confusion. First of all, they divided the groups of children with “minor” head injury into those who were kept as inpatient in the hospital overnight or outpatient (not hospitalized). Your son would not qualify as inpatient, as you’ve said no one found it serious (did they keep him in the hospital inpatient? That means they checked him in, put in a pediatric ward, etc, not just that you ended up in an A&E ward for a long period). It THEN says, “ the inpatient but not the outpatient group displayed increased hyperactivity/inattention and conduct disorder between ages 10 to 13, as rated by both mothers and teachers.” But you haven’t mentioned these issues; you’ve mentioned language delay. And is he aged 10? And IMMEDIATELY after that, it says: “No clear effects were evident for various cognitive/academic measures, irrespective of severity of mild injury or age at injury.” So, nothing to do with language delays, learning difficulties, etc. If anything, they’ll use that article as proof to not give you the resolution you want.

The very first sentence of the conclusion is, “Most cases of mild head injury in young children do not produce any adverse effects…” Did you read this, OP, or just the name of the paper?

As for the second article you linked to, it’s about adults and talks about “the length of loss of consciousness” and post-traumatic amnesia. And these are still considered mild head injuries. Yet you think your son had a serious head injury. As you can see from additional comments here, there are posters whose babies had skull fractures, and there was no lasting effect. Solicitors know when they can’t “win” a case.

I am indeed only sorry this has caused you stress. But it may be time to accept that your son’s language delay is as random as many language delays. But the question is, how old is your son? If he’s still VERY young, he may catch up before you even get a SALT referral.

@Droite

MNers are incredibly blasé about "accidents happen". I wonder if the reaction would be the same if the child had fractured her skull and had serious bleeding on the brain? Would you all be telling OP to ignore it because "accidents happen" - especially given that this was a totally avoidable accident?

But that didn’t happen. That’s exactly the point!

@SudokuWillNotSaveYou

You’re right. Any TBI involves loss of consciousness of a certain Glasgow score. Even the mildest ones

OP hasn’t said her child lost consciousness yet.

Oh OP, I just want to commiserate with you. You must be so upset. I really hope your DS is okay.

When my DS was this age he rolled off the sofa onto a tiled floor, I was with him, it just happened so fast. He cried a lot and then vomited. I rushed him to the child hospital (fortunately just around the corner from my house) and spent 48 hours in there whilst they assessed him for head injuries. He was actually fine but its the worst feeling.

Please take it easy and see what happens xxx

He didn't have a 'severe head injury'

I’m so sorry this happened, it must be very upsetting.

I think in all honesty the nursery is unlikely to contribute to SALT on the basis of this incident - there’s no clear link between his fall and any issues with his speech.

You have the option of pursuing a negligence claim. I would, however, caution that if medical professionals have already examined your son and indicated that they weren’t concerned you will have a real uphill battle in convincing a court that your son’s fall caused him any long term issues. You’ll need an independent medical report to confirm that there is a link, and any medical professional will be highly influenced by records from the HCPs who examined your son at the time of the accident.

I would try not to focus too much on the fall. It was an awful, stressful thing, but take comfort from the fact that doctors examined him at the time and weren’t concerned.

Many children have speech and language delays which have no obvious cause and which resolve themselves in time and / or with SALT. I would focus on getting your son the support he needs with that and try to leave the fall in the past.

I'm sorry your DS was injured.
At 12 months he is probably in shock and it has had an impact on his communication.
My DS has whacked his head many times self-injuries they're fairly tough.

You have absolutely no proof that him banging his head has anything to do with his lack of speech development.

OP

Firstly, you really have not determined whether this event is the cause of your child’s problems. It is really easy to see why you might jump to that conclusion, but as yet this is your supposition, not a proven fact. Nobody will pay you damages etc on the basis that you think this is the cause. There are many, many causes for speech delay or developmental delay- it is somewhat more likely that there is an alternative cause. Either way, you’d need to prove that on balance of likelihood it was the fall that caused his probability. To be severe enough to cause this, I would expect there to be other findings on examination or investigation (such as imaging of the brain).

I know it’s easier to think this was caused by somebody else’s negligence, rather than being one of those things/inherited etc. You saw a&e and GP- neither found anything concerning enough to investigate further, by the sounds of things. Of course, both of those doctors may have missed something more serious. But it’s also highly likely they were not worried as there was nothing to find. It is therefore, a bit of a leap to assume that your child sustained a head injury severe enough to cause neurodevelopmental problems.

You need to seek proper medical opinion and have some proof that your child sustained a serious head injury which caused this before you have a hope of getting compensation.

I’d also say, it could be doing your child a disservice to label his issue as a brain injury if it is actually something else.

Omg I'm sorry I can't give practical advice but please ignore the 'accidents happen' comments. I've worked in nurseries and the only way a baby could be dropped from a changing table is pure negligence. Yes it only takes a split second of looking away but that's why you DON'T. It's standard for every nursery I've worked in to gather nappy, cream etc on the table/within reach so that you don't have to take your eyes of the child for any reason. And if they're particularly wriggly or difficult you have another practitioner help or change them on a changing mat on the floor. I'm so sorry this happened to you, it's really not on at all.

How has his communication changed?

There are two issues here that need to be dealt with separately.

Firstly, that the nursery has been negligent in allowing a child to fall off a changing table. This absolutely warrants a complaint and an investigation into how this happened. The nursery needs to take full responsibility for this, however, a medical professional had determined that the child was ok at the time, and so the nursery have no case to answer with regards to any medical issues that have occurred more recently. It'll be more of a case of ensuring that their procedures for nappy changing are sound, and that the risk of any similar accident is mitigated.

Secondly, that the child is, for whatever reason, speech delayed, and that needs input from professional speech and language practitioners. Many children are similarly challenged, and it's more than likely the case that this would have occurred without the head bump. You need to focus on getting the correct support for your child, as you have no evidence to win any sort of case against the nursery.

Do the best for your son, instead of putting all your energy into trying to apportion blame.

How old is your son now?

Your OP says it all to me: "to help us get some money out of the nursery to pay for Speech and Language Therapy"

I work in a nursery and while accidents can and do happen, I have yet to see or experience a toddler fall off a changing table in any nursery I have ever worked for. The tables should be set up so everything that is needed for each child is accessible on a specific table & if you’re taking in 2 toddlers, one needs to be on the floor while the other is on top of the table. Definitely get them to investigate this further.

I'm not sure how many one year olds need SALT. Your poor son is he okay?
You have been told by medical professionals that the two issues aren't linked. Why are you seeking compensation? Human error and very traumatic but too much compensation culture is going to ruin the 🌎.

Your best resolution for your sake is to move on. It was a horrible accident but you have no case. You can drove yourself potty pursuing something you have no case over or you can move on, vow to never return to that nursery and continue being a good parent without the stress of pursuing a zero winnable situation.

He is so young there is zero to suggest a link.

My understanding is to prove the incident led to the resulting SAL delay you have to prove both points.

A) the nursery was negligent.
B) the injury caused damage to the brain resulting in the Sal and delay.

You've been told that B just isn't so.

What about the negligence investigation? We're the nursery found at fault?

I'm not keen on where there's blame there is a claim but where negligence has resulted in proven financial loss (Eg loss of wages etc) then it's a totally different scenario.

If you have medical documentation proving he was ill for a week with his head injury and you lost wages and nursery fees you didn't use there is a proven link if there is proven negligence.

Personally though as awful as it sounds that it happened it doesn't sound like there was serious and long lasting injury and any claim exists.

I think it's very easy to get so embroiled in an argument and belief you're right it's hard to step back and accept your reaction was emotional.

And to prove they were negligent you'd have to prove they didn't follow their own risk assessments when using the changing table.

Hi OP
I would be mad as well and it's understandable to want something from them.

However you are talking about major head injuries and then in the next sentence saying that both a GP and A and E don't seem too concerned.

If you were going to get any money for treatment you would have to prove under UK law-

That there had been negligence (though duty of care is much higher for young children so you could probably prove this since the result was falling).

That your son was injured

That the injuries were a direct result of the negligence

That any ongoing difficulties or side effects are a result of the injury.

That these ongoing side effects will cause ongoing pain or suffering or financial consequence.

Have you actually got any doctor to say that his speech difficulties could in any way be connected to the fall?

MNers are incredibly blasé about "accidents happen". I wonder if the reaction would be the same if the child had fractured her skull and had serious bleeding on the brain? Would you all be telling OP to ignore it because "accidents happen" - especially given that this was a totally avoidable accident?

But that didn’t happen. That’s exactly the point!

No, what is the point is the way that MNers evade this question. You can have a child fall off a table due to someone's negligence and sustain little or no injury - the fact that there was little injury does not prevent them being negligent, it just means there is nothing you could claim for. Or you could have that child fall off that table as a result of exactly the same negligence and sustain a very serious injury, and I suspect that most of the "accidents happen" brigade might well be encouraging OP to take legal action. And yet the causation is exactly the same. So why the different approach?

We see this on MN in so many different contexts. I remember a thread where a child got knocked down crossing the road on a pedestrian crossing, sustaining something like a fracture. There were quite a few responses essentially saying a fracture is trivial, accidents happen, don't be greedy. Yet when asked whether their response would be the same if it was their child who had been knocked down and they had ended up severely disabled - which could very easily have been the outcome - they all went very quiet.