What to expect after serious injury at school

[rockybalboa]

My DS is in Y1 and sustained a serious injury at school yesterday at the hands of another child who is a known aggressor and causes physical injuries to other children at least weekly. We first raised a concern with this child and ours over a year ago and I know other parents whose children have suffered at the hands of this child have raised concerns as well. I don't know if the child has SEN but he does now have a TA with him at all times in the classroom, just not at playtimes when these incidents occur. We have been keeping in touch with the school via email as phone reception is awful in the hospital and the school have advised me what immediate steps they have taken to prevent further incident. My question is: as the parent of the injured child, am I to expect anything further from the school re follow up? I have read their behaviour policies online but they seem quite rightly to focus on how they will address the perpetrator's behaviour. I am just interested to know whether the school have to formally report the incident to anyone (the council?) and basically what happens next. DS won't be back at school until Jan now anyway and I guess we will need to advise school of any ongoing injury related issues at that point for the purposes of his own health and safety. It was just the extent of any formal investigation involving us that I am curious about if anyone can advise please? This isn't AIBU so please don't slate me if any of this is considered unnecessary info, judgey or inappropriate in any way, I am not out gunning for the child, I am just trying to find out what, if anything, happens next.

Thank you in advance.

The other child should be permanently excluded. I'm so angry on your behalf.

I've spoken to the education dept of the council today for guidance but as its school holidays there is nothing anyone can do for now. So infuriating not to able to do anything. As for personal injury lawyers, I am one. And I'm not sure I want to go there yet/at all. I just want to crawl inside a cave and cry right now to be honest.

Sending you and sympathy, as I said in my earlier post the other child should be excluded. At some point you may well need to take legal action but hopefully in your position you have a colleague who can act for you. I appreciate that at the moment your concern is for your little boy but I hope that you have someone to support you too

Feel terrible for you OP but just wanted to show you how sharp these LA types can be. The fact that you are a lawyer should ensure that they treat you well and don't try to wriggle out of their responsibilities. You son will be your priority now and you will have a lovely Christmas with him and your family.

Come January you will be strong enough to deal with everything. Just use whatever support you can to get through the next week or so.

Oh your poor family :(

You sound so down to earth. Well done for blaming the school for this horrific incident and not jumping straight on the child.

In reception, my severely disabled child was supposed to have 1:1 support all the time. He was only ever violent at school, because school refused to bother meeting his needs. The other parents knew DS was a gentle soul outside school and didn't want to complain. But their children were telling them that DS was left alone (which was unsafe for him if anything else) so I got the parents to make complaints about the school.

The HT tried to tell me that the complaints were about DS but I wrote most of them with the parents, I knew what they said.

Because of this I managed to get the LEA to see how useless the school was, the headteacher was fired, DS was moved to an appropriate school (where not one more act of violence occurred because his needs were met) and everything got sorted.

The school are failing your child and now he's permanently injured! I'd go spare.

Did the school say why they aren't thinking of exclusion? I realise they may feel that this is as much their failure as the child's - and they may well be right - but the fact is they are putting all the children in the school in danger.

Have you contacted the police, OP?

They haven't mentioned exclusion or even suspension whilst changes are put in place. I guess it's important for the child with the additional needs to maintain consistency at school as well. I guess it would be easy enough for anyone of us to be the mother of that child and she has to feel that the school have let her son down too by allowing a situation to escalate whereby he could behave that way whilst in the school's care. That's me with my rational head on. Our family members are obviously screaming "what has been done to punish this child" and demanding floggings etc (joke but you get the idea).

Woodsman: school actually said they felt they should be unusually candid with us about the sanctions given the severity of the situation.

SunnaClaus: no, police not contacted. The kid who pushed him is 6 as well and although I'm sure he meant to push him (he'd already pushed him into the mud twice that playtime), I very much doubt he intended to cause serious injury. What benefit would there be of involving the police? That's not meant as a snippy response btw, I just genuinely don't see what that would achieve but if I missing something then please do tell me!!

The child isn't legally responsible for his actions so I don't even know if police will get involved. The child is obviously being failed though, and because of this your child has been seriously injured. It's just not acceptable at all.

Sorry, Rocky, I misread Yr1 as Yr7.

The school certainly isn't protecting any of the children but I do feel the child should be excluded until there are better measures in place to ensure the safety of all the children.

So sorry, dreadful that your son has been hurt like this. Child should be permanently excluded, incidents before and after would now send chivers down parents spines. I do not think the aggressor is a victim, or that this incident be used to gain 1 to 1 support in mainstream school as this puts others at risk.

I am glad you have a School Governor and a Teacher responding to your post. It would have helped us if we had had that in our case. I would recommend consulting a solicitor as well, and do make sure that everything is backed up in writing.

My son was also hospitalized by a child at school this year, luckily he appears to have made a good recovery but until he finishes growing we don't know exactly what the long term effects will be.

Look at the School's Health and Safety Policy, that should state whether or not they have to inform anyone else. As your child was hurt at playtime, as was my son, it is unlikely that it has to be reported to RIDDOR but they should report it to the Local Authority.

I have found that the Coram Children's Legal Centre is really good for giving free advice to anyone without a solicitor acting for them too. If you can't get through (lines are always busy), then leaving a message outside of hours does get you a call back.

In our case, we made a complaint but the School Governors did not take it seriously, you cannot rely on them to do the right thing unfortunately.

It sounds as if your son actually has a life-changing injury, luckily, my son's wasn't thanks to the skill of the doctors in A&E. Take the holidays to do some research online, but use your position, I would not want to let me child back into a situation where he felt unsafe, or I felt he was unsafe and you may be able to use that to make sure it isn't him that has to move.

Take care of yourself and your child, this kind of thing is really horrible, I know my son had to learn some pretty hard lessons in life from what happened to him this year, and so did I.
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Oops, sorry, hadn't read 2nd page when I posted.

Just wondered how your DS is OP? I hope to goodness that he is on the mend and that you are coping with all of this.