Accident at Nursery

[Pixar1]

My son (3yo) had an unsupervised fall at nursery (he’d only been there a month) from some climbing equipment. It turns out he was pushed by another kid off the equipment, landed on his head and his body flopped over to one side. He was about 70cm up at the time, although the play equipment goes higher.

It wasn’t witnessed, and we were told he just fell a couple of steps. But we were so confused when he developed a dropping and black eye that afternoon. We took him to a minor injuries unit and requested nursery watch the CCTV.

The next day, when they watched the CCTV we found out the true extent of the fall, and he had to go to A&E to be checked out given the height he fell from and how he landed.

He is ok, but after being reassured by the nursery that safety processes would be reviewed, he had another unsupervised fall on Monday! 4 nursery sessions after the last one!

This time they watched the CCTV immediately, he wasn’t pushed and it was less serious as he landed on his back.

Their response has been - we can’t supervise them all the time while they’re playing on equipment at height and we can’t prevent him from going on climbing equipment.

AIBU to take him out of this nursery?

@Goldbar

I wouldn't expect someone always to be able to prevent the accident, but I would expect them to at least see it. Surely they have staff supervising the outdoor play area and those staff have a general awareness of where all the children are, even if they're not interacting with a particular child at that moment? It seems second nature to the staff at our nursery.

If you have turned to stop another child falling, do a shoe up, sort out a squabble, it is easy for a child to fall unseen in that moment.

I had similar issues with the nursery child went to. I pulled my child out and stated in a letter the reasons why. The manager and I had a chat, changes were implemented and my child went back.
However, issues began to arise again. Lack of staff - not supervised properly, staff weren't always engaging with the children or providing enough information about their day. Accidents weren't being reported to me or others. My child was being hit by another child and it was being missed by staff. The last one particularly infuriated me. It was always made out my child wasn't truthful, It became apparent that some staff had unnecessary bias towards certain kids. "So and so isn't capable of hitting, they aren't that type of kid." This was about the child that was hitting mine and had been caught doing so.

Honestly, they must have hated me by the end because I questioned everything. I have friends who worked in a school nursery and private nursery.

I pulled my child out again, and never looked back. It turns out other parents have done the same since because they've had similar issues and are not happy with the levels of care. I'll be gobsmacked if they pass their next ofsted. When I think about it I should have reported them.

In your situation I would pull your child out and find somewhere else. They haven't listened.

The fall isn’t the problem it’s that his key worker didn’t notice. That’s the problem. I would def pull him out and I say this as someone who runs a nursery!

Accidents happen, and he’s 3 years not a tiny toddler or a baby who needs 1:1 supervision and help. It could have happened in a playground when you’d taken your eyes off him for a few seconds and you wouldn’t know exactly what happened.

They should have checked the CCTV, but if he got straight up and showed no immediate signs of head injury it would likely have been a cold compress and a reminder to all children to be more careful. I imagine staff were near the climbing frame just didn’t have eyes on at the second he fell.

In a year he’ll be school age, and part of a class of around 25, with one teacher and a TA to supervise playtime (and no CCTV). I think pulling him out of preschool is an overreaction.

When I worked in a nursery, there were always staff stationed by the tall play equipment. The Room Senior was responsible for ensuring the staff knew who was to stand there. This is totally unacceptable.
Lots of staff will try to use outdoor time as an opportunity to stand and gossip/hang out with staff they enjoy spending time with.
I’d change setting.

3 year old can and absolutely should be supervised at all times.

The height of the fall is not too significant.. 70cm is the height of a pikler triangle so should be suitable for 3 year olds and younger.

However... no one supervising the equipment, two children on it at once, close enough for one to push the other.. no safety mats.. and then having been made aware of the trip to a&e and reviewed the cctv.. they were not then reviewing their processes .. this makes me wary.

I would be reconsidering my son’s safety there and possibly referring the incident to the LA or Ofsted.

Remove the child. Appalling behaviour by the nursery. And actually the ratio of child to worker should be adequate to stand in a play area and watch everyone. It shouldn't have been possible for that bad an accident to be missed by everyone if they were doing their job. Regardless, even you overlook a 'freak' accident, it's unforgivable that it happened twice. They should have been on high alert and it still occurred.

Thank you all so much. It’s really helpful to read everyone’s thoughts and experiences.

LethargicActress - They had filled out an accident form on the day saying he fell a few steps when I went to collect him.

But I asked a few questions to the key worker and she said it wasn’t her that saw him fall and that she would ring me to tell me exactly what happened. So I didn’t sign that incident form.

So you see there was an incident form for an accident that didn’t happen, BUT there wasn’t an incident form for the accident that did actually happen - or at least not that I’ve seen and signed.

Nope, I haven’t posted before. I’ve just joined mumsnet tonight as OH is fed up of my trying to decide what to do haha

@busyeatingbiscuits

“ If you have 2 or 3 adults and 20 or 30 children, it is not physically possible for every child to be watched all the time.”

You would NEVER open a nursery if that’s the staff:child ratio you had! Never mind go and play outdoors!

And yes, you do make sure someone is watching all the time. Yes there are odd moments of the day that circumstances can line up and you miss something but not near climbing equipment. If you don’t have a supernumary member of staff to supervise the equipment as an extra then you don’t use that equipment at that time. It’s closed off. Agreed, someone may not have been able to stop him falling, but to not have known what happened is inexcusable. Especially with CCTV. They even admitted lying on an accident form, which is report to OFSTED.

I used to be a nursery manager. There should be a risk assessment and safety mats out. Children do go out of sight (within a small boundary but never far from an adult) in childcare but usually something like a hight climbing wall would be supervised closely.

They sounds terrible, they are squirming with the lies because the know they’ve not supervised properly. I’d complain further.

Yeah I'd be changing nursery.

Those saying you can’t watch every child at every moment - maybe not but you prioritise those who are climbing on the high play equipment. Obviously.

ChateauMargaux -70cm doesn’t sound much but… a fall of 100cm is an instant trip to A&E according to the NHS website.

And it was a fall from which he landed directly on his head - rather than falling sideways - if that makes sense. Tbh I still can’t really work out the trajectory of the fall and I’m not allowed to watch the CCTV as there was another kid in it - the kid which pushed himself. So for his safety I can’t watch the video.

Also 70cm isn’t the full height of the equipment, it’s the height from which he fell the first time. They measured it for the A&E consultant.

I think all the posts and experiences on here have made up my mind. He won’t be going back. Thank you so much to all who posted x

Was their response in writing? If so I'd be reporting it to ofstead

And yes - I think they should have a dedicated member of staff to watch the children climbing. It’s in a different area to the other activity tables. I’m glad others think this. I was wondering whether I was expecting too much.

Yuckypretty - no she rang me today so I don’t have it in writing.

[quote Thehop]@busyeatingbiscuits

“ If you have 2 or 3 adults and 20 or 30 children, it is not physically possible for every child to be watched all the time.”

You would NEVER open a nursery if that’s the staff:child ratio you had! Never mind go and play outdoors!

And yes, you do make sure someone is watching all the time. Yes there are odd moments of the day that circumstances can line up and you miss something but not near climbing equipment. If you don’t have a supernumary member of staff to supervise the equipment as an extra then you don’t use that equipment at that time. It’s closed off. Agreed, someone may not have been able to stop him falling, but to not have known what happened is inexcusable. Especially with CCTV. They even admitted lying on an accident form, which is report to OFSTED.[/quote]
Those are the legal ratios in England for 3 and 4 year olds.
With lower qualified staff it’s quite typical to have 24 children with 3 adults.
If the class has a teacher then you can have 26 children with 2 adults.

I also wouldn’t believe anyone who says one adult can have their eyes on multiple moving children at the same time and simultaneously watch them all while also dealing with falls, lost gloves and runny noses.
It’s not possible unless you have all the children sitting quietly right in front of you in your line of sight.

It's easy to say in a year he'll be at reception, but currently he's not and there's a fuck load of development and independence that comes in that year- it's a quarter of his life.

At his age he should have a childcare ratio of 1 adult to 8 kids, more than enough staff to be keeping an eye on things. I don't mind run of the mill scrapes but this seems negligent, especially if there are no mats or anything down. I'd be interested to see the risk assessment for this piece of equipment.

Take him out before it's too late.

I’d be pulling your child out based on their reaction to the incidents.

I had a similar occurrence when my son got a bad knock and we ended up in A&E after hours (the accident was shortly before pickup) and the nursery staff member responsible completely fucked up the processes, so I was in hospital with a concussed and vomiting preschooler and no clue of what had really happened.

When I spoke to the nursery manager about it the next morning she was apoplectic. None of their head injury protocols had been followed. They’d comforted him but done an inaccurate accident form, rather than the head injury form which is much more detailed and designed exactly for these sorts of issues.

She took a number of steps to prevent a recurrence, kept me informed of the changes that had been made, and could not have been more apologetic.

Shit happens. (My second kid tripped at nursery and put his teeth through his lip on the side of a planter. No way to prevent that sort of thing, bloody and awful though it was.) The way the nursery shovels said shit is what’s important here.

I'd take him out, I'm very relaxed about things like this usually but they are regularly leaving tiny children unsupervised and even worse doing it whilst they're climbing on high equipment.. and to top it off they lied to you, your son could have had any number of serious injuries such as a skull fracture and they sent him home with a "don't worry - lie". I wouldn't be leaving my kid there.

One of mine had quite a serious accident at nursery and I trusted them because of how they dealt with it. They reported it straight away to Ofsted and were very open in explaining how it had happened and what they’d do to change. Could have happened to anyone. If you have any suspicions they haven’t been honest I’d pull him out immediately.

Mine have been to settings where they make fires, climb etc. they have had a 1:2 ratio for activities involving tools or anything riskier.

I used to be a nursery nurse. All play equipment such as climbing frames etc had risk assessments and we would have a member of staff to supervise at all times. If staff member couldn't then the slide/climbing frame was sealed off for this reason.