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.

I agree with Purplepidjin - it might be worth starting another thread to get a perspective on the Police/SS response. The nursery did the right thing by your daughter. Any other response to fingerprint bruising on a child would have been negligent.

OP, I would be devastated too in your position. Nursery asked dh in to talk to them once about "child protection" because ds had said that daddy cut up his clothes with scissors and it upset him and this was the same week that daddy had fallen down the stairs holding him.

Daddy had indeed cut up old vests for rags and after the fall we had been to A&E as we were so scared that ds might have hurt himself. When dh fell, he thew himself under ds to break his fall and I remember in A&E dh feeling that he had to show the terrible bruising he had just to prove that there had been an accident. Ds had very minor bruising but the whole of dh's side was black.

Nothing further happened, but I was shaken by the whole incident. I felt people were judging my parenting and finding it wanting and that family life was so very much more fragile than we had believed.

As others have said, all you can do is engage in the process and acknowledge that people had your child's interests at heart. They may have been precipitate but there is nothing you can do about that now. You have to go forward from where you are.

Gooseyloosey - sounds a bit scary - the fall etc. all your nursery did was ask the right questions, your SH must have given a satisfactory answer - then there's no action to take - its all good

Scarred, it's bizarre that you think the worst thing a parent could complain of is being inconvenienced- op is quite clearly distressed and panicked, as many of us would be.

I think it's more about the audacity of the nursery and ss. How very dare they do their jobs. Gasp

I didn't get any sort of 'audacity' thing from what the op has written, just terror of getting caught in a system populated by the sort of people who think a parent is merely inconvenienced by suspicions of them violently abusing their child.

But Maples you have picked up on a key point, they know you well so wouldn't suspect and that is also dangerous for the child. It's so easy to get caught in a 'but they seem so nice' type trap which is why nurseries and other providers can't just assume that what they see is the whole picture.

If I was caring for a child with unexplained bruising to the torso that would ring alarm bells with me

Nobody has said it wouldn't be frightening for the parent. But I would rather a parent be frightened for a few weeks while it gets sorted than a child be frightened for life because people don't want to upset the parents

I would far rather have to jump through hoops when innocent than have a child missed because no one bothered to report something.

SoupDragon - really? I think that the problem here is that the nursery where the OP has her DC is being incredibly badly managed.

I'm sorry you are going through this and finding it difficult. But the nursery have probably followed their protocol for this sort of thing.

In the centre where I worked with vulnerable children, parents had to tell us of any injuries so it was documented for the right reasons.

The one incident we had in a preschool nursery was the child was dropped off by mum and no mention of what had happened. When a member of staff asked the child what had happened, the response was that the child had broken a bedroom light and daddy got mad. 2 members of staff individually were told the story so the teacher went to the head. Then the flow chart was followed. Not because we wanted to hurt the family but to protect the child.

I hope the nightmare is over for you soon x

I didn't say it would be a danger for your child, but an 'I know them they are nice' attitude can be dangerous. Parents who abuse are too often able to hide it which is very dangerous even more so if people ignore tell tale signs because they know the parents

Although it must be very distressing for you and your family, Why cant you see that this sort of safeguarding may help to save a child from being abused. The nursery is not at fault here. Normal bruises and bumps happen all the time but your child had fingerprint bruises that lasted 5 days or more, yes it was purely accidental but I know if I worked in a childcare environment I would report that too.

If I had to tell nursery every time the dc's had a bruise we'd be there every day doing it. They always have some bruises.

I suppose it depends on the child though. Nursery knows my DD is very 'gung-ho' and forever boucing around so it's pretty easy to see why she gets so bashed.

But if she had anything that nursery had to call me up on then I would rather they did that than ignore something dodgy.

Why did you not mention the bruises to the nursery? My DS has HFA which means his communication (he is 4) can be patchy. ANY bruise / injury, no matter how insignificant, is mentioned to them. Same as I query any injury -no matter how small- he received while at the nursery.

I think you should be feeling happy that the nursery are looking out for the wellbeing of the child. I don't believe SS go around whipping kids away from happy and loving families, so i am sure it will all be fine.

Sounds like the nursery did the right thing. Bizarre to advice moving to a nursery where things are more lax.

That aside, sounds like an extremely stressful timd for you, Op. Try and get some rest.

meglet - what I do is write down all injuries in a little book, which goes back and forth (they do this as a special request for my DS, as his communication is not great at times). If anything crops up they can check my notes..

Overkill / PFB... I don't care. The safety, happiness and wellbeing of my DS comes first. I would much rather my DS was in a nursery that called on worries.

op - may I ask? If your DD had returned with those bruises, what explanation would you have sought?

They don't do the little books past 3yo. If the dc's do something really silly I tell the staff or get mum to mention it.

Yes, Bonsoir, really. That's why I said it. Obviously.

Management aside, fingertip bruises round the hips of a child is not ordinary run-of-the-mill bruising. Yes, it can be innocent but it can also be otherwise.

This is awful for you OP
You must be terrified.

Personally I think the nursery did overeact. The protocol should be to discuss concerns with the parents unless there is risk of further harm to the child following this discussion. They should then make a decision what to do next based on the conversation with the parents and the advice of their safeguarding lead.

In a nursery situation where the family is well known and there are no other concerns - why did they escalate so rapidly?

If they had concerns they should absolutly investigate. But according to the relevant guidence it should always be done with the cooperation with the parents and making sure they know what is going on.

OP The reason these things take so long is because it is likely that your child is a low priority case. Social services have a duty to investigate now but if they had serious concerns things can move very quickly.

I do NOT think advising people to take their children to settings lax in CP is a good idea.