Can I view the CCTV?

[Mothersworries]

My 2 year and 2 month old started at nursery last week, she’d had a week and a half of settling in sessions but did not like it. Her first day didn’t go too bad she’d been on and off crying all morning, but not the worst.

On her 2nd day, I was at work and received a phone call from the nursery to be told there had been an accident and a member of staff had stood on my daughters arm, they’d said she was having a tantrum (edited by MNHQ) and rolling on the floor which I can believe as she doesn’t like nursery yet and they’d stood on her by accident. They said she’d been crying for over an hour and not really moving the arm so advised I come and collect and get her checked over so I did.

Collected her from the nursery and signed the accident form, and took her to a&e she was moving it slightly but not a much as usual and was holding her elbow a lot. We needed a scan as the it was on her elbow and a joint was involved.

Went down for the scan and she screamed and cried a lot as we had to move her arm into different positions for x-ray. So the results came back fine but the doctor said she thought that it had been slightly dislocated an injury sometimes called pulled elbow children get from getting swung by their arms and when we’ve done the x-ray it had popped back into place.

My daughters arm is now completely fine had no issues since. But the more I’ve thought about it and spoken with people I keep being told to request the CCTV? Is this something nurseries do?

I do believe it was a genuine accident but I can’t help worrying now. I also do no want to start my relationship off with the nursery on a bad foot. What should I do?

Do nurseries show cctv on request??

Parents can see photos and videos of other children at nursery? Not sure how it can be a GDPR breach when sharing videos is common.

There are rules around consent for those.

Thankyou this is helpful to know

Exactly !

Ask to view it - if they refuse then report to police and social services as a possible non accidental injury.

I'm sure if the nursery has cctv then they have consent from parents.

It certainly doesn't look like you can't share cctv footage, just that you ideally have consent and if not you need to decide if it's reasonable "only disclose the footage if you have the third party’s consent to do so, or if it’s reasonable to do so without their consent".
ico.org.uk/for-organisations/advice-for-small-organisations/whats-new/blogs/data-protection-tips-for-early-years-settings/

I'd say a parent wanting to view footage of their child being injured is very reasonable.

People are very quick to shout GDPR and claim it means you can't share information at all, but that isn't the case.

You can make a Standard Access Request (SAR) to view CCTV on behalf of your child. I believe you must do this in writing giving date of interest and approx time if possible. You have a limited time to do this, 2 weeks I think. In any case CCTV recording usually operates using a loop system where previous film is overwritten and if you delay you could lose the opportunity. The nursery can charge a fee for providing this service. Google GDPR, nursery, SAR. The nursery will have a nominated Data Controller who you should speak to and ask to see the GDPR policy (you may have received this on registration).

Ffs the world has gone mad 😠

Exactly

It really doesn’t matter if the law makes sense to you or not. It is what it is.

This injury is a really common in little ones, far common than you may think. Think of all the times you may walk hand in hand with your child, they fall over and what do you do? You lift them by the hand to stop them falling all the way. It happens with kids who try to dart off and their parent, or whoever is holding their hand, stops them from running. If something or someone is holding a hand (or accident stood on an arm) and the child pulls away from them the injury can happen more easily than you may realise.

I'm glad they are doing well now and recovering. It must have been a shock for you. Yeah I'd want to talk it through with the manager properly and see how it's been recorded in accident book at least and how they would prevent similar incidents again. Injury enough to go to hospital is quiet serious.

Specifically which of the GDPR principles would the nursery be breaching by showing op the CCTV footage?

I didn't call it pulled elbow? I'd want to know more that's for sure, it's pretty upsetting.

I didn't invent this rule 😁 I meant I was agreeing with the knowledge that it usually requires consent. Usually a setting would outline this in the signing up stage and parents would consent to levels of photography, recording even consenting to communication they receive electronically.

I never said staff watch it! As I stated the manager deals with it (so 1 person). Am pretty sure they know the rules/laws/permissions around this!!

It just seems ridiculous as you could just as easily walk in and see all these other children

I know what you mean. I've experienced so many varying levels of rules with my kids too in pre-schools, clubs, schools etc 😄

It’s not about seeing people. CCTV footage is considered personal data.

What the ICO says in their advice for early years providers: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/advice-for-small-organisations/whats-new/blogs/data-protection-tips-for-early-years-settings

"It’s now commonplace to see CCTV being operated in small businesses. This may be for staff monitoring, health and safety, or for the detection and prevention of crime. If you have CCTV you’re likely to be capturing personal information, such as people’s faces or movements, so you’ll need to comply with data protection rules.
As with other types of personal information, people can make a SAR for the footage of themselves or, in some situations, on behalf of a child. If this footage contains images of other people, you should only disclose the footage if you have the third party’s consent to do so, or if it’s reasonable to do so without their consent. Where this isn’t the case you should redact the footage to remove or disguise the third parties wherever possible.
If your CCTV system doesn’t have the functionality to redact footage, you could consider providing stills with the identity of third parties blanked out where this is appropriate."

So if they're following good practice it would involve assessing who is in the footage - is it isolated to just where your child and a member of staff was, or is it of an entire room with many other children and staff - and is it reasonable to share other people's personal data with you, if they can't blur or black out everyone else. They may judge that showing you a twenty second long clip of the entire room is okay to reassure you of the cause of your child's injury. Or they may judge that they need to protect their staff, who they could be worried you may blame and idk try to personally sue or something, as well as the other children, whose parents may not be thrilled you can see perhaps sat on a potty in a corner of the room, and then they could get complaints from other parents why has Mrs So-and-So been viewing footage of our child half naked...

What exactly did the accident record say happened? Did they explain in detail? They should have. Did the hospital agree with their explanation? If not they will report it.
I would want to speak to the manager and be reassured that it was a fluke accident and if he/she can't do that then my child wouldn't return and Ofsted would be notified to investigate.

Pretty sure they don’t.

@Jellybeanz456 Your manager might want to update their knowledge…

Try a subject access request for the cctv footage with any 3rd parties blurred out.

That assumes the nursery has a software system that can blur people on the CCTV footage! Perhaps some big chain nurseries might, and a head office who has a person who handles subject access requests and knows how to use the software and comply with the response. Or it could be this is an independent nursery who uses an outside service for the CCTV, who can process that. Or maybe the nursery basically just has a webcam covering the main nursery room that links to a computer in the office, so the manager can look out for any serious incidents or keep an eye on their staff... A lot of settings, for understandable reasons, don't even have CCTV that covers areas where children are. Just the reception area.

I'd honestly be reporting this to police.