Meeting later advice please

[littlepie]

DD1 (20 months) had a fall off an indoor climbing frame last week. She cut her lip & had 2 grazes on her head. An accident report was filled in and I was told when I collected her. Had decided to do nothing further but it left me with a sense of unease and after talking with DH we are going in for a meeting tonight.

I'm concerned they didn't contact me when it happened so I could make a judgement about whether to collect her. Would you expect this? I work with older children & would do this so maybe that is colouring my view.

What's concerning me more is how it happened. For this activity I would hope DD would be closely supervised. When I collected her the activity was still in place but there seemed to be no member of staff "manning" it. Is this reasonable?

Again when I collected DD there were 10 children (mix of baby & toddler room) and 1 staff member who had her back to the room. Two children were in a ruck and another was crying. The other staff member was changing 3 nappies in another room.

There has been a bit of staff turnover and 2 new members of staff. The room has a different "feel" to how it used to and not for the better.

DD loves nursery but today was really clingy when I collected her. I want her to enjoy it there and be safe.

Am I over thinking? What would you say in the meeting? I don't want to appear PFB or whiney but feel things just aren't quite right.

Thanks for reading as this is all a bit of an unknown!

If you have a sense of unease then you are right to go and speak to the nursery. It doesn;t have to be accusatory, more to find out what their procedures and policies are, or to say that you are really worried they didn;t contact you at the time

If it was me i would want to know the circumstances of the incident (children fall off things all the time even if supervised 1:1), how 'serious' was it i.e. did she require immediate intervention, did she just get up and keep playing, was she upset etc. What was their assessment on her injuries and how did they arrive at this conclusion? Have their been other similar incidents on this eqpt?

I'm not sure i would expect to be contacted unless my DC had received significant blow to the head - mine come home with all sorts of scrapes, bumps, grazes etc which mostly can be put down to kids being kids rather than any sort of neglect on behalf of the nursery staff. If there was a significant blow to the head i would like to be informed so i can make the judgment call.

Its perfectly reasonable to question the staff ratios, staff turnover and that you are not happy with this. Ultimately you are paying for a service and more than that you expect your child to be safe and happy - if you don't get that feeling then you need to raise it and if it does not improve look to change nurseries to one you feel more confident with. With that in mind though i would also say that pick ups are the worst time of the day for children - they get upset when they start seeing other mums turn up and not theirs, coupled with a long tiring day they are exhausted and grumpy which leads to lots of unhappy children at the same time - this does not automatically mean they have been like it all day!

I have worked in nurseries for the last 12 years and I have only ever felt the need to call parents about injuries their child has had a handful of times. I tend to go by the following considerations:

1. If the child is so distressed after the accident that it is taking longer than usual to calm them,
2. If the parents have specifically requested that they are contacted
3. If the child was mine, would I want them to be seen at the hospital or by a doctor,
4. If it is an injury that I'm really not happy about I would suggest medical attention.

I had a little one that was racing in a scooter out in the garden. He fell and had an almighty nose bleed and scrape from his forehead to his chin. Had he been mine, I would have taken him to the gp just to be on the safe side. I phoned his mum, explained what had happened, who was treating him and how and then suggested she might like to take him to be checked over. Mum declined to come and collect him as was her choice.

My dd has fallen a few times when with her childminder. She's had a few bumps on the head from other children hitting her with toys too. I have never been contacted when I'm at work about it because they were all minor injuries that are normal and I accept they could just as easily have happened when she was with me (probably more likely if she was me as I let her explore/climb more than the cm).

I wouldn't be happy about the set up you described later in your post though. The way you've described the staffing sounds a bit off to me, so I think you should probably trust your instincts and question that. Try to be as polite as possible about it while showing you are concerned. I know my dd2 would hate this set up, especially the staff turnover, as she is a very shy little thing and likes the continuity of one person caring for her. A lot of children get upset and confused about changes of staff.

Thanks for your replies. Had to re jig the meeting for Thurs (road closed!).

I think you're right, I need to know exactly what happened. It's my understanding that she was ok afterwards so that's probably why they didn't feel the need to let me know. As Lucy says I don't think one of those 4 applied so fair dos they didn't contact me. I will let them know if something happens that requires an accident form I would like to be contacted.

The ratio/staffing thing I will go in with the polite but concerned. I like that phrase!

I wouldn't expect/want to be called every time DS had a fall/graze etc (I have to sign accident forms at least once a week so I'd never get any work done if they called me each time too!) so personally I wouldn't be worried about that. It sounds like your DD is much less clumsy different though so if you want to be contacted each time she hurts herself then I think you should simply ask them to make sure that happens.

What you say about the lack of staff supervision would worry me though and I think I'd be asking questions about that.