Injuries in Nursery

[SirMcG]

Wonder if anyone can help, upon pickup from a private nursery that costs hundreds a month my child (aged 3) often has unexplained injuries, I feel it is increasing distressing me specifically when on head and face.

Nursery continiously blame my child, in that it is not being reported to an adult. I have completed numerous accident forms on pick up that note 'unexplained'. I have reported it on three plus occassions, spoke to my child about the importance of reporting, nursery have done the same, a game has been set up to illustrate the importance, and they say they have checked the child over periodically, still the issue persists.

Is there any advice?

So the nursery are putting the responsibility on a 3 year old to tell them that they are being hurt? What the fuck sort of nursery is that????

Have you asked your child how it happened and what did they say? I know a 3
year old won’t be able to explain like an adult but you might get some clues - especially is it from falling over or other accidents or is it another child?

Do they have qualified competent staff? Do they have enough staff?

Correct. They have said the room is extremely busy and they cannot guarentee that the observe small injuries. I thought I was being oversensitive but maybe not?

A blue bruise on the forehead was today's (he does a sweep of hair across the front but hoped that should have been picked up).

At 12-18m I would argue understandable as they are lurching about a lot learning g to walk.
My son had terrible facial injuries (big bumps on forehead, he cut his eyebrow and his lip twice each)

At 3 absolutely not.
Maybe a bump on the shin but not regular injuries.

I'd be giving them hell and be looking to move my child asap.

Seems like it varies, sometimes the child cannot recall, other times it sounds legitimate, other times its made up...i.e. it was the big t-rex's fault but we are on to possibly 7-10 forms of unexplained and so I feel as though something more needs to be done.

Competent I would hope so as it is a large known place with settings all over the country. Enough staff seems to be an issue from my perspective.

I appreciate all the comments, at least it has reassured me as I genuinely thought I was over reacting.

You are not over reacting. It sounds terrible. What other short cuts are they taking if they cannot ensure that children are not safe from being injured regularly. I would move him.

How many kids are in the room to make it extremely busy? And how many staff? There’s ratios they need to adhere to, and I wouldn’t want loads of 3 year olds in one room with minimal staff. It doesn’t sound like a calm environment for the kids.

So your child has sustained multiple facial and head injuries and nursery aren’t able to explain how they happened? That is appalling! And needs reporting. I don’t know the rules as such but I’m sure ofsted would be interested in this sort of thing

Are there any injuries where they do know the cause? 7-10 unwitnessed injuries seems far too many.

You can contact OFSTED or the local
authority childcare dept if you are unhappy with how this is dealt with, say you have safeguarding concerns.

She's 3 and she's sufficiently unsupervised that she is repeatedly getting injured and no one knows why.

You need a new nursery.

And probably a chat with OFSTED.

This does not sound right at all

When DC1 was at nursery every mark/bump was noted in their file and we were informed at pick up.

If we dropped off & they had a bruise/plaster/injury of some kind the nursery would ask us about it, we’d obviously tell them if something had occurred so they were aware

It’s most definitely not your child’s responsibility to self report.

Definitely report it

Personally I’d start looking at an alternative nursery

Not saying they are right or wrong but my child who is slightly older had quite a serious injury at nursery and didn’t tell anyone. It was only when they got home and told me I knew. They said it hurt but didn’t cry and didn’t tell a teacher. They ended up having surgery for that incident.
They every now and again come out and say they hurt themselves at school but something more minor like falling over, no physical injuries. Again they say they didn’t cry and didn’t tell anyone.
Just another point of view as if your child is not crying or just carried on they may not have realised the injury.

The ratio in a pre- school room for children aged 3 years - 5 years is 1:8, but this changes if there is a qualified early years teacher holding EYTS or QTS and are working directly with the children it's a ratio of 1:13 .

The ratio for toddlers 2-3 year olds is 1:5 ( used to be 1:4).

Rooms are busy in a nursery, but that is no excuse. The ratios are there for a reason to ensure that there are the correct minimum ratios to keep young children happy and safe.

OP you need to arrange a meeting with the manager and room leader in the first instance, as what is happening is unacceptable. If you have done this already then you need to escalate it further to the area manager or operations director for your nursery.

If it is one of the three biggest nursery chains they all have area managers. If after this you get no joy then go to OFSTED.

I am an early years worker and we don’t witness every incident that happens. We can’t have eyes everywhere, it would be good if we did.

an incident occurred today where we were in ratio, the children were all engaged in activities however one child had fallen which I witnessed, so I went to tend to them but while I did this another 2 children decided to hit each other, they were in my blind spot (other 2 colleagues were spotted around the area but not near incident) and thankfully one of the children did come and tell me what happened and the other child admitted what they did, but I didn’t witness it so unless the first child approached me we wouldn’t have known that an ice pack was required for a bump on the arm.

its so east to criticise people who work in nurseries but it’s such a difficult job at times, I personally can’t have eyes on all the children in my area.

Yes, most of the time they are unwitnessed i.e. 7 times.

That’s an absurd amount of times to have no witnesses to incidents.

speak to management, it could be they need to change staff in areas, change actual areas to make sure their are no blind spots in the room,

I work in LA nursery now and we have more staff in each room however when I worked in private nursery we worked right on ratio of 1:8 which was hard.

if you have 8 children playing in your living room there is no way you can keep an eye on them all never mind in a huge nursery room.

@2chocolateoranges
I suppose if parents are paying a lot of money they probably expect that their young children won’t experience multiple unexplained injuries. That’s the difference.

A one off is fine but multiple is absurd, which is what I said!

I wouldn't trust them and would look for another and better run nursery.

There is no way I would keep my child in a nursery when the nursery staff justify her injuries by saying they are too busy to prevent them! They have pretty much just told you that they have too many kids and too little staff to be able to keep your DC safe!! Definitely move nursery to one with a much better teacher to child ratio, absolutely max 4 kids per adult, if you can afford it/it's possible of course