Warning to anyone with a child at nursery

[Heffalumpspots]

Hi - I haven't posted on here before. I had a difficult pregnancy a couple of years ago, and lurked a lot and got a lot of reassurance from hearing what other people were going through but never got up the courage to post. However, we are in a terrible situation at the moment and I just need to try to let other parents know what can happen.

My daughter is now 27 months, and has been at a local day nursery two days a work for nearly a year. The nursery lost a manager through no fault of its own last summmer, and since then there has been no stable management. This had obviously been a matter of concern for us, but as it takes a long time to settle our daughter into a new environment and the staff seemed interested and caring we decided to leave her there. I wish, with every bone in my body, I could go back and change that decision.

Last week, a temporary nursery manager reported us to police and social services because our daughter had bruising on her body. They were small bruises, around her hips. The previous evening she had attempted to climb out of the bath, and I had grabbed her to stop her falling on the bathroom floor, and although I am not sure I remember seeing any marks at the time, the bruises are a fingerprint pattern where I caught her. The bruises were never anything other than brown/green/yellow and after less than 5 days had largely faded away.

The nursery manager made the decision to report this without so much as asking us how the bruising had been caused. She did not even wait to speak to me when I collected my daughter, despite knowing that the police would have contacted me. There is no deputy manager, and so far as I could gather in my very distressed state the member of staff who was left to meet me had had no involvement in the report.

As a result of this, we had police and social services turn up on our doorstep and demand that we take our daughter, immediately (at 6.30 in the evening), to a children's hospital which is over half an hour's drive from our home. There was noone there to examine her, and we had to return for well over an hour of examination and cross-examination the following day. We had been lead to believe, by police and social services, that this would be the end of the matter, but once we were in the examination it became apparent that once this process is triggered, it will inevitably take a number of weeks. We have no guarantee that our daughter will not be taken away from us, and even if it is concluded that no action needs to be taken against us this will remain on police and social services files for ever.

The effect of this on our little family is all just devastating. We are finding it very hard to keep going. I had very bad depression 5 or 6 years ago, which had not been a problem at all in the past few years, but I'm now constantly fighting a sense of absolute panic. I'd also worked hard to start to rebuild a career, and am left with no childcare and no idea how I am meant to trust my child to any kind of childcare again.

However, the things I wanted to let other people know - and which I wish to God I had known, are:

• I have no idea how much 'spin' there has been in what we have been told, but there certainly seems to be a view that in any case where a child has bruises on their torso then all of this is justified. If that is the case, please, please don't send your child to nursery if they have any bruises on their torso - or if they could develop them. I didn't actually see my daughter's bruises in the morning before she went to nursery: I was dressing her half in the dark, and they could have developed later anyway.

• If you have any concerns at all about nursery management, please, please get your child away from that setting. It doesn't matter how good the staff are, this kind of thing is always something which is decided by the manager. And it doesn't matter how they reached their judgement, because they are a 'nursery manager' the police are automatically involved when they make a report to social services.

• If you find yourself in this awful situation, don't let yourself be strung along by police and social services giving the impression that all you need to do is let your child be examined. That is only the start of a process which will inevitably be hanging over you for weeks. From some of the information online, it seems as if we actually had a right to have a lawyer in the examination with us - we are going to take legal advice in the next few days.

Had we known the nature of the process we were engaged in, we would have insisted on doing that upfront. I am just hoping we don't live to regret, for all eternity, not having done so.

Oh, and it may not be the Manager who has the concerns. S/He is probably the Designated Person for all CP.

Basically, if any staff member has a CP concern, they must report it to the DP within an hour. They may not discuss it with any other person. The DP then has a strict set of procedures they must follow when acting on the disclosure.

From my experience of it as a staff member, it's a horrible experience all round - fraught, tense, suspicious, no one to talk to. Unimaginably horrible as a parent, and I'm not trying to denigrate your feelings, i just don't want you to be suspicious of the nursery who are doing their best to keep the children safe. Often nursery/school staff are the only ones who can spot and stop the (thankfully rare) abusers.

"I bet far fewer nannies make reports per child."

Is that necessarily a good thing though? Or do some nannies find themselves in a situation where they are scared to say something/too close to notice what is going on?

Im a nursery manager and im sorry that you're in this stuation but anyone involved in a childs care has a duty to act on any safeguarding issues. The manager may have been a little hasty in not talking to you first. If this had happend at my nursery i would have discussed the bruises with you and dependant on your response then would have made the decision to refer or not.
The only way I would have gone directly to social services would be if there had been previous issue, there were signs of sexual abuse or if I felt the child would be at further risk by me discussing it with you.

Your other issues regarding the management of the nursery I see as a seperate issue. Referals to social services do NOT have to go through the nursery manager, all staff members are able to make a referal just as a member of the public is able to. Most nurserys do have a child protection officer.

Does your child have a key worker? Have you spoken to anyone at the nursery since the referal?

Also I totally understand that you and your family are going through a horrible and invasive process but please do not tell people not to send their children to nursery with bruises! Also social services are not child snatchers and at the end of the day people are quick enough judging them in cases such as baby p so surely it's better that they invesigate everything? Just because there is a genuine reason your dc has bruises what if there was a poor child being abused and neither the nursery or social services investigated?

Sorry this has turned into an essay, I think ringing the nursery tomorrow and having a chat with them may give you some answers ask to see their safeguarding policy.

Agree with purplepidjin - it's a tough experience but I'd rather nurseries over reports. And got it wrong ragged than the opposite. I'm a SW - lots of my clients went through years of abuse before anything mu h happened and removal was too late in some cases.

Nannies don't have a firm chain of command or policy to follow, therefore it's much harder to know what should actually be reported. They're also more likely to know the antecedents to an incident - eg dc tries to escape from the bath, therefore might be grabbed awkwardly.

Nurseries (and schools, my experience) have very clear guidance on who tells who, how and why.

Good point - if dd had a visible wound or unusual bruising yes I would probably point it out - otherwise it's hard for them to tell with the accident book etc.

Tbh though there's a simple guide to identifying bruising - if you think out and outline of a body with shaded areas for body parts likely to suffer accidental and non accidental bruising- you get given it on child protection training usually. This is the thing - torso bruising is less likely to be accidental whereas shins and faces - toddlers bump into things all the time - dd nearly always has 2 or 3 tiny bruises on her lower legs from playing.

Mrssmurf - totally agree and supprt your post

I feel this nursery is trigger happy if they reported to SS based on one isolated incident of a suspicious bruise without first discussing with you as parent.

Once this incident is resolved, it would be best to remove your child. You are the paying customer after all.

So in essence you are saying that your dd had bruises on her torso where you grabbed her roughly. The bruises were caused by you trying to stop her falling out of the bath. Imagine it the other way, how many scenarios can you imagine where a small child gets finger marks on their torso from an adult? The nursery are doing their job.

When dd was first learning to walk she was with dh when she fell and was about to whack her head on the corner of a table. Dh grabbed her arm and stopped the fall. She had finger marks in her arm. I knew how it happened but suppose I didn't. Should I ignore it?

Accidents happen and there is no way ss would take her away for the first report. The police would not be interested either. Be open and honest and you have nothing to worry about.

I have to agree with everyone else. Everyone who works with children should have done safeguarding training and has to follow protocol and the safeguarding policy for where they work or volunteer.
This is a good thing to help keep children safe. I'm sorry for what you are going through, but it's a hard thing for anyone to do, to report concerns, and it's not done lightly. Where there is no abuse, you are not going to have your child taken away if this is the first time they have seen bruises on her. There are a lot of children who sadly no-one is looking out for. The ones that make the headline news stories are only the tip of the iceburg .

I can only say that, if the consensus view of a large number of people who work with children is that this is how a family should be treated, I am absolutely horrified.

I came here hoping to help others and get some support, at a time when I was feeling very, very scared. I now feel simply terrified for what will happen to the three of us, but also that this is what parents are expected to expose themselves to.

please do not worry too much heffalumpspots, it will be OK.

It is terrible for you to have to go through this, OP, but it really is a positive sign that your child's nursery is so hot on safeguarding. You should have confidence that this is not the sort of place where e.g. proper recruitment procedures are not followed or odd behaviour of a staff member would be ignored. Certain types of bruising or injuries on a child are more concerning than others and must be reported, just as has been done here. Everyone knows the vast majority of cases are completely innocent, but unfortunately there are children's lives at stake. I hope it's all quickly resolved for you.

How is it a positive sign that a nursery is trigger happy on reporting? I am a parent using the nursery and paying their fees. I KNOW I did not abuse my child. If they had a safeguarding policy that required them to report torso bruises, as a parent I would not know. I would expect the nursery to exercise proportionality and discuss with me before they went to the authorities.

If I was an abuser, that would give me a warning. If I was not, then it would give me a chance to explain and also the nursery an opportunity to monitor further.

As a parent, I am appalled by this nursery's behaviour. I would pull my child out at the first opportunity if I knew another parent was hounded in this way.

It is not the politically correct thing to say, but what parent would put their child in the hands of a bizarre nursery and child protection authorities, if they could deal with more reasonable nursery they were paying to look after their child.

Blue shoes - you are appalled a nursery was concerned about a child's safety? How strange.

I always tell nursery if there is any marks on my children, with a full explanation of cause. If they have had any kind of fall, I also mention that as bruises can take a while to appear. My elder daughter has a clotting disorder that at times makes her look like she had been beaten, and even though she does not attend nursery, I have told them about it. Likewise if I collect my child and there is an injury, I am given an account of what happened. Communication is essential to ensure the welfare of each child.

I personally would have been very concerned about the pattern of bruising and that they look like fingerprints, especially after hearing the explanation of the cause. To me that does not sound plausible - finger print bruising suggests more force than what you described.

I completely agree with the report being submitted, to safeguard your child. It is the nurserys responsibility to do so, but any further action is the decision of the police and Social Services.

I completely agree with your child being examined as, like with my child, there could be a serious underlying medical condition that needs treatment.

It seems to me that all involved are trying to help your child, but as a parent I do understand how distressing it is for you, and hope it is soon resolved, and also that your child is ok.

I'm really sorry you are going through this. I can't imagine what hell this must be for you. But - they really were following fairly standard procedures. Your daughter had fingermark bruising. That's not the same as bashed herself big bruise on her shin bruising. A clear outline, in bruises, of ten fingers. That triggers procedures. It takes quite a lot of force to grab someone and leave your fingers in bruises on their body. It is seen differently from the normal sort of bruising that young children are generally covered in.

It had to be reported. And they don't go to the parents first. If they were abusing the child, that gives them time to cover it up, get their story straight or leg it!

In your case, you grabbed her to stop her from injuring herself. I can imagine that your panic in thinking she was about to crash head first onto a hard floor made you grab hard. There is no abuse. And I am really really sorry that you have to go through all this. But I wouldn't call for a procedure that called for instant action upon viewing fingermark bruising on a child to be changed.

I really hope that this is settled very quickly for you. It must also be very upsetting for your daughter. xx

Since nothing ouch happens with a one off report for a one off injury I'm sure the worst of it is a bit of inconvenience for the op. if there were previous concerns it will be somewhat different.

At work k am often gob smacked how much some parents treat as like it's a customer service and complain about our actions being inconvenient for them. Child protection -there's a clue in the name. It doesn't have (we try not to offend adults) in it.

There are lessons to be learned from every serious case review. One that came from
Baby p was about the mother and the social working being on such good terms that it trn becomes v hard to ask challenging/accusing questions. Child protection needed a shake up. If the result of this is a 'trigger happy' nursery then so what - I'd rather the op was offended than abuse be missed.

OP, I believe there are some medical conditions that mean children bruise much more easily - you might want to look into that, because - quite apart from this investigation - if your DC did have one of these, early diagnosis would be important for your child's health.

The nursery have acted as they should, and a discussion of that is how i interpreted the thread

How SS then handle it sounds pretty terrifying. Heffalumps, maybe a different thread concentrating on that part would get you the support you need?

On the flipside I wouldn't want my child at a nursery that didn't take child protection seriously. If a child has these sorts of marks they can't go to the parents. As another poster has said this gives them the opportunity to make an excuse, or leg it, or be more 'careful' next time. It's child protection policy in every place that has duty of care over children.

Most child care/education places have an existing injuries record, where parents are meant to communicate with the nursery as they drop their dcs off (this is to protect the nursery/childminder/etc) but is also handy as a way to communicate with your child's key worker. For example if your DC has had a bump to the head they will keep more of an eye on them, or knowing they have a sore graze somewhere they will ensure they are careful of that area.

OP this must be soo stressful for you but they are not going to snatch your child away after a one off incident. I hope the process is over with quickly for you.