Is this neglect?

[Thanksforreading]

So DD has been attending this nursery for well over a year and we have never had a problem till last night. She is 2 years old.

I picked her up from nursery as usual (Thursday 5.45pm), and run her bath, take off her clothes and get her to sit on her potty. Before she sits on her potty she touches her thigh and says “ouchie” and “help me” so I have a look and I notice a red mark on her inner thigh! (Photo one) I was a bit shocked, but told her it was okay, and decided not to give her a bath but just a quick shower down instead. She then tells me “itchy” she’s got very limited words, so when she tells me itchy I was a bit confused as well, still not too sure what to make of it but I dress her and email nursery about my concerns. (6.30pm)
Husband gets back, and he looks, sends over a very strong email to nursery. By 7.30pm her mark is looking 100% like a burn mark from friction and it’s weeping hard, we just clean it a bit and pop aloe Vera on it, DD is super upset with lots tears and telling us “pain”
We have woken up to (photo 2) this morning to darken area of the weeping area. Nursery has replied this morning with an email saying they will investigate and give them day to get back to us.
No courtesy call nothing not even an apology or sorry to hear that this has happened, just they will investigate. Nursery closes at 6 pm.
I’ve managed to book our DD in with the doctors and they have confirmed with a written document, confirming it is a friction burn. I’ve given them till 530Pm and have tried calling them three times and no one has picked up and the voice message box is also full. I feel like my daughter has been at the hands of neglect now, and it is now a Friday evening, so this will be left till Monday morning at least. Am I being unreasonable or am I just asking for too much? This is a private nursery and we pay £94 a day for childcare.

I'm very surprised her GP hasn't referred to social services. All injuries to children should be investigated. It's not right that this can happen in a nursery and go unrecorded. I hope your DD recovers quickly.

Could it have happened between you collecting her and running the shower?

I presume by social care they mean social services, which of course exists all over the UK.

If the nursery is anything like the one I used to work in, if her nap ended at 2 she probably had a nappy change then. And if she then had a big wee but they went out for a walk this could have caused the issue but they have several toddlers to look after and can't be changing nappies constantly. I expect they have set times when they do it, plus if a child poos. Personally, if that was the issue I would accept it was just one of those things and just ask them to double check she wasn't really wet before going out in future.

With regard to key workers changing, that decision will come from the nursery manager in consultation with the staff. The manager will take the staff's preferences into account over the parents'.

I haven’t insinuated abuse at all. I have said this needs a discussion with the manager asap in order to get to the bottom of it. What is the point of wondering what all the possible reasons are, just raise it with the nursery. Maybe they know, maybe they don’t know. Maybe they’ve had previous issues raised by other parents, maybe they haven’t.

The OP isn’t going to get to the bottom of it by posting photos on an online forum with a load of people making random suggestions of what it looks like.

Inner thigh injuries are not a standard injury location for a toddler. Any decent nursery staff or manager will know this.

If she’s rubbed it whilst playing on a ride on toy or something similar then I’m sure the staff wouldn’t have noticed, they can’t see what is going on under the clothes

That’s a chemical burn.
My daughter had one on her face from infant olbas oil.
We watched it progress from a small blemish to your 2nd photo in 3 days.
All healed now and no scars thankfully.

Im with those suggesting cleaning fluid/bleach burn from any potty or toddler toilet seat, because of the area it’s in.

I think we kept it smothered in Vaseline to help it heal?

Ouch poor baby that does look sore! Is it possible for you to check her spare nappies in her bag to gage how often she was changed or do they keep nappies at nursery to change? Do they have a rope swing at nursery or a dressing up corner where another child may have put anything around her leg and pulled it away quick? I hope you find out soon and she heals quickly.

Did the nursery end up getting in touch with you OP?

Morning everyone,

The nursery has emailed us at 10.40am yesterday, I’ve just copied and paste what they came back to us with-

(We have taken your concern very seriously and are currently carrying out an internal investigation. We have also raised your concern with LADO who is the Local Authority Desginated Officer with the information you have provided. We have also let OFSTED know about the situation. We are awaiting LADO’s response on the situation as they normally advise us what further steps to carry out. In the mean time, we have started interviewing the staff members and have this morning gained all the witness statements as one of the staff members were on annual leave on Friday.

As soon as have more information, we will let you know and we will update you accordingly.

Thank you)

We are happy they finally responded and have speculated on what we think has happened(from the many many replies here), DH wants to not interfere with there investigations and will let nursery take the lead. DD has not been in nursery last two days and will go in tomorrow morning. Her inner thigh has nearly completely healed up. Please for those that are going to say we should take her out, we actually have not spoken much about long term future for DD just yet, but like I have said we are happy with how nursery is dealing with the incident/accident.

DD inner thigh has been healing well, I know it no longer hurts as during nappy changes she tell me “ouch” but sometimes points to the wrong thigh now! So I’m very very happy it no longer hurts her, and nightmares and tears stopped from Sunday night now and she’s sleeping all the way through again the last couple of nights.

Just as an early morning years view, my complaints policy is that upon receiving a complaint I do as the nursery have done by notifying relevant parties and then investigate myself and will respond within 28 days. (Thats how ofsted tell providers to respond to complaints) so while parents may feel the nursery haven’t behaved appropriately they are probably responding as per their complaints policy, AND responding without all the correct information is not a good thing to do. What they’ve done is to keep you informed as to their procedure and doing things the way it should be done by the book. I too would be happy with their response here.

Their response is very thorough! I’d certainly be satisfied with that as they seem to be handling it properly. I’m happy to hear that DD’s leg has healed and she’s feeling better. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen again🤞

That's a decent response from the nursery. In your shoes, I would feel like they've really listened to your concerns and are taking steps to find out how it happened, and to ensure it doesn't recur. I'd be happy for DD to return to nursery too, following this email, and I'm glad to hear she's feeling so much better!

glad your DD is feeling better