Bit of a long story here - please bear with me!
We've been with our childminder for a few months and have been very happy with her and DS has loved going to her. He's 11 months old.
A couple of weeks ago, when I went to pick him up, she told me he'd fallen from a chair but that "Fortunately, he didn't bang his head" DS was fine - his usual happy smiley self. We didn't get any sort of incident report.
Two days later, when feeding him in the night, I noticed swelling on his head. We rang our out of hours docs and went off to the children's ward, arriving at 4.30am.
To cut an incredibly long story slightly short, after various tests, x-rays and scans it turned out that DS had a fractured skull which, according to the paediatrician was "Unlikely to have been caused accidentally." DH and I had no explanation for this injury, apart from knowing for certain that it hadn't happened whilst DS was with us. We were then subjected to the full force of Social Services and the police child protection unit. We told them about the incident at the childminder's. When interviewed by them, she told them that he'd been in a booster seat on a dining chair and had kicked the chair over when he'd been turned to face the table. She stated that he couldn't have hit his head as it was below the level of the top of the chair, also that the surface he fell on was cushioned.
The upshot of this was that his injury was still unexplained. As it was the weekend, even though he would other wise have been discharged he was kept in hospital so that we couldn't pose a threat to him.
On the Monday, we were told that he'd have to be placed with family, where we'd be allowed contact (I am still breastfeeding him) or if no family could have him, he'd be placed in foster care. I never want to cry like I did that afternoon. All we knew was that we'd done nothing wrong and we were having our little boy removed from our care. We were heartbroken.
Fortunately, my mum's brother and his wife were able to take him and allowed us as much contact as we wanted, although we weren't allowed to stay overnight, so for the first time in his life my little man didn't have Mummy or Daddy go to him when he woke in the night or first thing in the morning.
The day after he was discharged, the social worker and police asked that we take him to the childminder's to be photographed in the offending seat - turns out that his head was well above the level of the chair and the 'cushioned' floor was actually very slightly cushioned vinyl on concrete.
A week after he was placed with my uncle, a meeting of SS, police and health visitor heard and saw the evidence of the photos etc and all agreed we were no threat to our boy and that he could come home with us immediately. The paediatrician also agreed that the real version of the fall from the chair - as opposed to the childminder's original version was consistent with DS's injury.
So - now we obviously don't want to stay with our CM. It's not that we think accidents shouldn't happen, and this was an accident, it was the fact that we put our little boy to bed the night it happened not knowing that he had a serious head injury - I shudder to think what might have happened -and that she then lied to the police to try to cover herself.
Under the circumstances, would we still be expected to honour the 4 weeks notice we agreed to when we signed the contract?
Many thanks if you've ploughed through this!