I need help. I’m utterly distraught and upset with my sons school, does anyone have any advice?

[mummytorands]

So I’ve been awake all night with keeping my 8 year old as comfortable as possible and yesterday’s events and I wanted to go to the school today and complain about how they handled things but I think I’m going to write to the chair of governors instead so I want to box clever.

So, I leave work yesterday (I work 10 minutes from the school by car) at 2:45 my children are usually let out at 3:10-3:20. School call at 2:50 telling me my son (8) has had a fall during playtime she explained he hurt his arm, elbow hip and knee. He was grazed seen by first aid but very upset and could I get him early of course I said yes I’ll be 5 minutes. Asked then as it’s unusual for him to be as upset as she was saying as he’s quite a tough cookie has he done any damage. No she said first aid moved his arm but seems ok but he’s very upset and think it’s best you came early and that she would get my daughter for me too (5). I pull up to school a TA is bringing them both out and it was quite evident to me we needed to get to hospital. I could clearly see my son was in pain, he was holding his arm, his wrist and hand were limp. I was given no accident form but didn’t think about that until later as my main concern was to get him medical attention. I called minor injuries they said they had a 3 hour wait and they wouldn’t be able to xray today so off to a&e I went which was heaving but we were dealt with pretty swiftly. Xray and he’s broken both radius and ulna and one of the fractures is going into the growth plate. I won’t know the full extent until we see the fracture clinic in 24 hours however we were sent home in a plaster cast and sling and I’ve kept him comfortable with calpol alternating nurofen. My plan is to go into school tomorrow asking for the accident book copy but I want to see it and not have it done and back dated. I will tell them he won’t be in for the next couple of days until I know more but I’m not disclosing the damage he’s done until I know for definite.

I am furious. He very clearly to me had broken his arm the moment I seen him. She played it down to me on the phone and his arm had been manipulated and it should not have been. They did not contact me fast enough and no accident from was given. Does anyone have advice? I want to complain because I’m just so unhappy about the handling and I don’t want it to happen again but I want the first aid training to be looked into also. My poor boy.

Primary schools in the UK have an afternoon break, so what makes you think it was done at lunchtime and they waited to call OP?

Exactly how can you tell a bone has a fracture without an x-ray if it's not actually bent out of shape? OP says her son "was holding his arm, his wrist and hand were limp" – yet a soft tissue sprain can cause the same symptoms.

Hi there, I don’t think it’s really beneficial to argue between us. There’s no indication OP made her son feel unsafe or uncared for? She’s posting on here for advice and seems to be a concerned upset mum to me. We’ve all been there if our little one has got injured, stirs up all kinds of powerful emotions/ protective drive like nothing else. OP is showing genuine care and concern for her DC, it indicates good parenting not poor to me.

That’s down to the pressure on the ambulance service. A relative of mine was advised to put elderly parent in car and take straight to A&E because there was a min 6 hour wait and he needed to be seen immediately. I was advised to take elderly parent by car to A&E for the same reason. The doctor I spoke to on 111 said - “it’s the opposite of what medical advice should be - ie don’t move him and wait for ambulance, but this is the state of the NHS”.

Have you read the thread, or at least the OP's posts?

UK primary schools DON'T all have an afternoon break. This is the point.

Yes, I've been following the thread from the start and have read all of OP's posts. The school called her, she answered, she came to pick him up early. I'd still seriously love to know what an appropriate robust attempt at contact is.

OP herself says he fell at playtime. Not lunchtime, playtime.

I was a first aider in a school, you need to remember they are not medically trained. They can't tell if your son has broken his arm, their job is to provide immediate first aid, make him comfortable then call you.

They did all this, yet you're still not happy. We also didn't give parents a copy of the accident form. It's all done online now as well, so nothing to give.

What are you hoping to achieve by complaining? I know it's upsetting your son has been injured but accidents happen.

I’d like to know how long between being injured and the school calling the OP. If it was any significant amount of time then the school messed up.

I broke my arm when I was at primary school. I was in a lot of pain. The school first aid person decided that it wasn’t broken because I could move my fingers. No idea why being able to move my fingers would mean it wasn’t broken because it was broken. Never mind how painful that was. They told me to go to my class, and come back if it kept hurting. It did, so I did, and they put it in a sling.

I caught the bus home as usual and the instant my mum saw my arm she knew it was broken. Massive swelling, pain and it was at a strange angle. She took me straight for medical treatment. Plaster cast for 6 weeks.

It was about 2 to 2.5 hours between getting injured and getting home to my mum. Plenty of time for them to have called her. We were only about a 5 minute drive away.

The next day she contacted the school and made it clear that they handled my injury badly and to call her in future. I got injured again that year I think and ripped the back of my leg open. Lots of blood. This time they called her and she came to school to check my wound for herself. Thirty five or so years later and I still have the scar from it.

She’s sleepless and distraught over a very common childhood injury. She’s about to go all guns blazing to the governors over the school’s response.

How is this helping him? He needs to be calmed, reassured and to learn that accidents happen, the effects can be managed and that he will ok and really, it’s not that big a deal. He doesn’t need to feel that the school didn’t care for him well or take him seriously. Children’s anxiety around stressful life events needs to be contained, the lesson he’s getting here is that he wasn’t taken seriously and something terrible has happened.

An alternative approach would be, “I can see that looks quite sore. It can be hard to tell if something is broken or just sprained, I think we should probably just get an X-ray to make sure”

We’re supposed to model resilience and emotion regulation to our children, not rage and rant over fairly common adverse life events.

Clearly not all primary schools in the UK do, as my child's doesn't.

You wouldn't be able to tell if your child had merely grazed themselves or had a more severe injury? I would. I guess we're all different. As I said, I don't think the school acted appropriately.

I agree with that. They also make a point of not alarming parents over the telephone about such things, especially if they have to drive.

I am sorry your son was hurt but thankfully he was treated, bless him. I expect it still hurts, I wish him a speedy recovery.

I agree with you OP.

The school should have got immediate medical assistance for your son. He needed Xrays to determined if anything was broken and needed to go to hospital.

The school should have phoned you immediately to tell you they believed your son needed to be seen by a doctor and they wanted him to go to A&E so either you would need to come immediately or they would call an ambulance.

A child in obvious pain and distress should not have just been fobbed off by a first aider with no medical training.

I would also question the school as to how such injury were sustained with just a regular fall.

Was he playing sport? was he in a fight? is he being bullied? was there something in the playground that cause this injuries and should not be there?

Ignore the people who are telling you that you are overreacting.

This absolutely needs to be investigated further.

I wonder how many people posting work in schools and this is why their first instinct is too try to minimise which is actually rather worrying...

You’re missing the point again. I didn’t say the injury could be assessed in its entirety from an X-ray, I was simply making the point that determining that it was a radius and ulna injury could only be determined by medical examination including X-ray.

This first aider didn’t seem to realise the bone was broken, if so it’s unlikely they were even considering blood vessels or nerve compromise

Good grief.

I might suspect a more severe injury, but I wouldn't be able to tell just by looking at my child's arm that they had fractured a bone, unless it was grossly out of shape. Clearly I was at the back of the queue when they were handing out x-ray vision. 🤷🏻‍♀️

@Mirabai No there are other ways of judging that, but you can see how far the bone displaced. All of which is beside the point # the point is the poster claimed it was just “radius and ulna” - but the severity of the fracture and risk of complications would not be known prior to medical investigation

And? Irrespective of severity and risk, no fracture of the radius and ulna requires you to be bussed in.

@mummytorands
Use their internal complaints procedure first until exhausted before complaining to governors/Ofsted.

Ask what actually happened after he had hurt himself, who dealt with him and what first aid training that person or any subsequent person who dealt with him at school had.

It may be that there processes need changing. And they may accept this but I suspect they won't as they may be advised not to admit any form of liability.

I hope he is feeling more comfortable now. Has he been able to explain to you what happened and what happened after? If so write it down in his words as soon as you can too.

Meanwhile in the real world….

I suspect a school doing the above would end up on some sort of ambulance service watch list.

But you were saying that after a fracture someone needs further assessment to ascertain whether there was nerve damage. Which aren’t routinely done, unless you clinically suspect nerve damage. And then you used a plain X-ray as an example, while absolutely will not show nerve damage.

Assessment for neurovascular damage should happen even after soft tissue injuries, irrespective of whether there is a fracture so

This first aider didn’t seem to realise the bone was broken, if so it’s unlikely they were even considering blood vessels or nerve compromise

is missing the point. Haematomas/nerve injury can occur without fracture

Not all primary schools do have afternoon breaks. Just so you know for future reference. Noone can impose their own experience on to others.

What is the relevance of a different decades old injury on the op's son's incident?

Noone can impose their own experience on to others.

Lordy, we're talking about school playtime here!

This was in response to a poster’s point that there is some degree of ignorance on the thread over injuries and shoving people in cars. She did not say that this particular case needed more than a car.

There are some types of arm fractures that would require an ambulance.