Baby keeps getting pre-existing injury forms at nursery

[New2Nursery]

BS1 started at nursery in January and has had four pre-existing injury forms completed by his key worker at nursery already. These are for scratches on his ear and tummy (tiny ones - he scratches when he’s tired) and a bruise on his leg which was about 1cm long and very light green (genuinely no idea how that’s happened).

Is this normal for such tiny injuries? I get that they’re for safeguarding purposes but he’s a baby, he’s often swinging toys around and crawling into things, and it’s starting to make me worry they think I’m negligent?

Ask them if this is usual and if they write these forms for every bump and scrape that every child has. Might make you feel better to know that they are just overly vigilant and it's not aimed at you specifically but covering their own backs.

My nursery did it too - I never understood it until I got roped into an argument one day with an absolutely batshit set of parents screaming at the poor, very young nursery worker over a tiny scratch on their daughters cheek! The worker was trying to explain it had been there when the DD had arrived that morning but the parents were insinuating abuse and all sorts (and asked me to back them up!) ~ I never questioned a form they wanted me to sign again 😅 (pretty sure the parents were also asked to leave/left as I didn't see them again)

It's just posterior protecting on their part

My sister said maybe they’ve just gone on safeguarding courses or they’ve had a baby who was abused and got pulled up on not being zealous enough, both of which would make sense…

My sister’s toddler’s been in nursery for two years and has had exactly one report though, and this was from giving himself a black eye falling off a slide!

Yup, as above it’s to cover themselves. For example at the nursery I worked at dad dropped off but in the way the little girl had come off her scooter and scraped her elbow and cheek, mum picked up and started going nuts that nothing been there when she’d got her dressed in the morning and what the hell had happened. Parents clearly hadn’t communicated but luckily we could easily produce a form signed by the dad.

So they do have to cover their backs and for a crawling baby I can see how they’d go overboard tbh. They don’t want any repercussions on injuries they haven’t noticed and be accused of poor supervision etc.

We're supposed to do a form for every injury - it's as much covering the nursery as for safeguarding. They don't want a situation where one parent drops off a baby with a bruise and then the other parent picks up and asks the nursery how the bruise happened etc. Or an accusation is made about the scratches happening at nursery and they can't prove baby came in like that.

I know of a childminder who has been pulled up by Ofsted when a parent has made a complaint about an injury happening at their setting, and although the childminder correctly documented the accident, they didn't also document that the child came in with a grazed knee or red mark from home.

Literally everything is supposed to be noted even though in practice minor bumps and grazes might not be especially in a busy preschool room.

This makes me feel a bit better!

At my daughter’s nursery there was a mum who tried to blame a pre-existing bruise on nursery. I’d seen the bruise at playgroup on the Thursday and the girl went to nursery on the Friday. That night they had to go to a&e and because they didn’t know where the bruise came from they blamed it on the nursery (she only went on Fridays).

After that the pre existing accident forms ramped up a lot. I Don’t blame them

There's probably been an issue which means they're being hyper vigilant again

Just after DD started walking we had some of these (plus incident reports from nursery too). I honestly wouldn’t worry. Anyone working in childcare knows the scrapes crawlers and new walkers can get themselves into and they need to protect themselves too worst case scenario.
The worst for me was when she face planted the hard floor and got a fat lip, then literally a day or two later she fell onto the straight edge on the corner of the base of the sofa right near her eye. I thought omg what are people going to think, she’s got fat lip and a bruised eye! Thankfully the bruise near her eye was a distinct line so obviously a bump into something. She’s far more stable on her feet now so we have fewer accidents but those first 6 months of walking….!!!! So much anxiety.

Could be worse it was on record that dd had "needle and restraint marks on hands and wrist" she had a procedure the day before and the nurse held her down she bruised badly you could see finger marks 😳 I documented it with the staff as well as the hospital letter as evidence I wasn't pinning dd down and injecting her

Then there was the black eye incident..